Modern Usage
Many English speakers use "begs the question" to mean "raises the question," or "impels the question," and follow that phrase with the question raised, for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Philosophers and many grammarians deem such usage incorrect. Academic linguist Mark Liberman recommends avoiding the phrase entirely, noting that because of shifts in usage in both Latin and English over the centuries, the relationship of the literal expression to its intended meaning is unintelligible and therefore it is now "such a confusing way to say it that only a few pedants understand the phrase."
Read more about this topic: Begging The Question
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or usage:
“The opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
—Anonymous.
A modern proverb along the lines of “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” This form of words has no precise origin, though both Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (16th ed., 1992)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)