this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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'irregardless' and improper 'begs the question' are both fine.
I hate these, but acknowledge that the battle is lost
My body will be on the hill of the latter.
Anyone prescriptivist about "begging the question" cannot be taken seriously about anything.
The canonical meaning is a sloppy mistranslation, and what everyone sensible intends and infers is a plain reading of those words in that order.
I hit up that Wikipedia article every few years and I still donβt quite understand it. I also put nearly no effort into trying to understand it because I donβt think Iβve ever heard anything but the technically incorrect way.
"Why do all American teenagers get cars as gifts for their sixteenth birthday?" is an example: It asks why something is true even though that thing is not, in fact, true.
Iβm not sure how to feel about understanding this now. Good, because I understand, or bad, because Iβll perpetually be annoyed from holding back the urge to correct.
Thanks, I guess?
There's no need to correct people using the phrase to mean "prompting the question", that's practically definition two at this point.
If you see people commuting the rhetorical fallacy, however, go ahead and call them out.
I once separated my shoulder trying to explain 'begs the question'.
... while hanging from a cliff?
Can you explain what improper "begs the question" looks like...?
"Begging the question" is a logical fallacy wherein "the speaker assumes some premise that has not been demonstrated to be true.". However, "begs the question" is used more as where something creates a question.
So by the original "because the earth is flat the planet is not rotating." You assume the earth is flat to justify your point of no rotation. Whereas the common usage "the flat earth theory and other science conspiracies beg the question of why people don't drop dead by forgetting to breathe." Flat earth theory created questions about human intelligence.
Ah right. I wonder if that's the result of linguistic convergent evolution or however you'd term it, or if the common usage of "begs the question" arose from a misuse of the logical fallacy. I've not heard of the logical fallacy myself and only know it from the common colloquial usage, but English isn't my first language so not sure how common the knowledge of the logical fallacy is among native speakers.
It's colloquial for a reason, convergence, misuse, or whatever I would say most English speakers would not know the logical fallacy. Maybe as something for people who do debate clubs/class but unlikely for others.
I guess it would be when something doesn't actually lead one logically to a question? Idk
Irregardless means what? It's a double negative, so it's "regardful"?