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We lost. You'll feel better if you give up, too.
by scott_s 7y ago
We lost. You'll feel better if you give up, too.
- zaroth 7y agoHonesty it makes more sense in the modern usage. Assuming something which should have been proven seems like the opposite of begging for [someone to ask] a question.
- everybodyknows 7y agoIn the original idiom, the "begging" is for acceptance of the speaker's claim on its face, rather than by "earning" agreement with supporting evidence and reasoning.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe "begging" is a mistranslation of medieval Latin petitio, "logical postulate", as if it were classical Latin petitio, "begging". The idiom descends in a continuous scholarly tradition from Aristotle and his original Greek refers more plainly to "assuming the original [conclusion]". See https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290 .
- peterwwillis 7y agoOh I'm not trying to feel better, I'm trying to help people understand why they say the things they say. And a lot of people don't know about rhetoric.
- scott_s 7y agoI don't think what you linked has anything to do with why. The why is straight-forward: what the phrase means in formal logic is not intuitive, and how people use the phrase colloquially is intuitive.