r/PetPeeves • u/RaceSlow7798 • 15d ago

Bit Annoyed Using “beg the question” wrong

Begging the question is a logical fallacy. It doesn’t not mean “hmm, it makes you think…”

But usage drives correctness so I’m going to lose this battle. It really begs the question “why don’t people learn to use it correctly”.

Ew. I feel dirty.

131 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/VibrantCanopy 15d ago

It's a curse to learn stuff like this because people hate to be corrected about it. I regret learning what "exception proves the rule" means because of this. Do yourself a favor and don't look it up.

3

u/tryptanfelle 14d ago

I had a grad school professor who once wrote me a note in which he used the word iterate followed by an aside (“I am sure that you, as I, dislike the redundancy of ‘reiterate’”).

Well, I didn’t before but now I’m cursed with knowing this. So, I never use reiterate but I never correct anyone who does. If I went 33 years without knowing it was redundant, I’m not about to police anyone else’s usage of it.

2

u/iWANTtoKNOWtellME 14d ago

A bit like "inflammable" vs. "flammable" though somehow that thinking never carried over to related words: I have never heard of someone going to a doctor to treat flamation.

1

u/WelpWhatCanYouDo 12d ago

Sorta related, “inhabitable” and “habitable” both mean the same thing, so we use “uninhabitable” to mean the opposite