Grammar girl here. Today I'm going to beg the question. Often when I do radio

interviews, collars ask me about the phrase begs the question. They often hear

begs the question, used to mean raises the question. And if they took a formal

logic class in college or had a particularly diligent English teacher, they

think the raises the question meaning is wrong. And they're right, but it's a

little more complicated than that, too. Bags the question is a term that comes

from formal logic. It's a translation of the Latin phrase Petiteo

principle, and it's used to mean that someone has made a conclusion based on a

premise that lacks support. It can be a premise that's independent from the

conclusion, or in a simpler form, a premise that's just a restatement of the

conclusion itself. For example, let's say squiggly is trying to convince

Ardvark that chocolate is good for you, and his argument is that chocolate

grows on trees, so it must be good for you. Ardvark could rightly say there's no

proof that something is good for you simply because it grows on a tree. Some

things that grow on trees are poisonous, Chinaberry tree fruit, for example. So

squiggly's argument is based on a faulty premise. Ardvark could correctly say

that squiggly's argument begs the question. What does growing on trees have to do

with being good for you? I remember what begs the question means by thinking that

the argument raises a specific question. It begs this question, what's your

support for that premise? Or more informally, what does that have to do with

anything? You use the phrase begs the question when people are hoping you won't

notice that their reasons for coming to a conclusion aren't valid. They've

...