Begging the question

[A18]

Yes. Sadly, illiterates seem to be well on their way to stamping out its traditional meaning.

Then what will we call the fallacy? "Petitio principii"? Abhorrent.

[A18]

The problem with dropping the traditional definition isn't that it's a break with tradition. The problem is that it makes a perfectly good idiom ambiguous.

Grammar, spellings, and definitions do indeed change—although formal English grammar has (happily) changed very little over the past 200 years. No one claims that the present state of the language is an act of God; it is indeed arbitrary. But that fact doesn't cast any doubt on the wisdom of a moderate linguistic conservatism. It prevents old texts from becoming unintelligible to modern readers; insures against regional dialects becoming too out of line with one another; and (as in this case) maintains useful features of traditional usage.

If humans weren't naturally prone to snobbery, the rate of linguistic change would be an absolute nightmare.

[A18]

Well, of course; it's not unambiguous any more. That's exactly what I'm complaining about. Its misuse has made it synonymous, in the minds of far too many people, with "raise the question."

By a "moderate" linguistic conservatism, I mean one that takes into account three factors; namely, (1) How useful is the convention being violated?; (2) What are the prospects for salvaging it, at least in educated writing?; and (3) Does adopting the contrary rule make me want to puke? As it so happens, here the answers are "quite useful," "considerable," and "almost."

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That is indeed what I'm saying. The purpose of language is communication; not variety.

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Yes; an absolute nightmare, as it used to be. Except even worse.

[A18]

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I take it you think that the traditional definition is not (and never was) sustainable, because the phrase sounds too much like "that begs for the question." But "that begs for the question" is an incredibly awkward construction; and as such, the analogy is scarcely inevitable. (Indeed, a Google Book Search turns up a mere two pages of results, all from the past couple of decades.)

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I actually had no trouble with it. But yeah, next time add some commas.

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Oh, the latter may well be a "purpose[]" it serves. Likewise, differentiated languages make ordering fast food as irritating an experience as possible for a great many of us. Plus a hundred other things. Now, how many of these are important, or even positive... that's a value judgment. We disagree, but it remains a valid reason for me to endorse a moderate prescriptivism.