THAT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE BEGGING TO ME
Here’s a totally awesome dragout beatdown over the use of the phrase “begs the question.” I imagine people sobbing face-down on their pillows about how this phrase doesn’t mean what they say it means. Please help, won’t somebody do something oh please god WHY . “Definitely a fight worth fighting,” says some earnest commentator. Perhaps, but how can we fight this ignorant menace?
There was some suggestion of retreating to the ancestor of the phrase, “beggars the question.” Hahaha. Abandon label! Fall back! I repeat, Fall back!
Losers.
I prefer a more forward-looking approach. To win this battle, we must free ourselves of the mistakes of past idioms. Here are some suggestions for alternative phrasings to describe the act of implicitly assuming the truth of some conclusion while trying to convince someone else to believe it :
- Raping the consequent
- Taking the Little Professor for a walk
- Mocking the weasel
- Screwing the baboon personal fave
- Slipping Rohypnol into the hemlock
That’s probably enough to get people started. Feel free to make up your own, just so long as you get my express, signed approval first. I can’t have just anybody using phrases to mean things. This is serious business, right up in this joint.
That reminds me, will people please stop referring to perfectly ordinary, run-of-the-mill spliffs as “blunts”? A blunt is when you wrap your dope in a cigar paper. When you use regulation-size papes and then call it a blunt it is very confusing!!!
Next week: hedge -emony or hegg -emony?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take the Little Professor for a walk.