What's the most petty/pointless/pedantic hill you're willing to die on?
What's the most petty/pointless/pedantic hill you're willing to die on?
For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don't want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That's ludicrous!
That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use "less" when they should use "fewer"
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Begging the Question is a logical fallacy, a circular argument. So when a position brings a question to mind that is other than a challenge to its validity, it raises the question.
A "moot point" originally meant the point was salient/still open for debate.
...and a forgone conclusion (a Shakespearean phrase) used to mean a conclusion that could be ruled out as implausible.
Just because someone says something begs the question doesn't mean they're talking about the logical fallacy though. Like, if I said "I turned down the million dollars," wouldn't that really beg you to ask why? It begs for context.
That said, I do admit that I use "raise the question" when I'm not referring to the fallacy just because I don't want to deal with explaining that people can say a phrase and not mean the fallacy. It just sounds like a cop out after the fact lol.
It raises the question. The reason begs the question has become acceptable is specifically because English speakers used the term in error often enough to make it common.
Which is to say, when the President of the United States uses the phrase ...which begs the question... in a speech, or a PHD academic uses it in a thesis in 2024, it's fine. But nineth-grade grammar teachers all across the nation cringe when they hear it.