Sir, - I would ask that you add misuse of "begging the question" to T. K. Whitaker's excellent list (January 7th) of sins to be avoided in this New Year. The Irish Times is not the only transgressor in this regard, and you find yourselves, in fact, in frighteningly good company. For some reason I have been painfully aware, just in the past few months, of a seemingly accelerating use of "beg the question" as a stronger way of saying "ask (or raise) the question" - perhaps on the theory that "beg" is a somewhat stronger form of "ask" in some contexts. The most recent, but hardly isolated, example occurs in Mary Holland's Opinion column of January 7th: "That begs the question of why other unionist politicians. . .were not similarly rewarded."
To "beg the question" is to assume, in a circular argument, that your conclusion is already proved (i.e. parallel lines never meet because they are parallel) or, by extension, to be logically evasive. Those who misuse the term run the risk of raising the suspicion that they know less than they ought, not only about the English language, but about logic. - Yours, etc., William Hunt,
Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.