It may surprise you to learn that I know the technical meaning of “begging the question” and have used it correctly. That is, the article argues (roughly) “ADHD is caused by internet,” which begs the question: why doesn’t everyone with internet have ADHD?

Begging the question, as the Wikipedia article you link explains, is a logical fallacy akin to circular reasoning: x is some way because it is x. My usage of the term was calling out this weakness in the article. I am not completely sure what the intent of your comment is and suspect you might be leaning on your awareness of this lesser-known fact as a sort of thought-terminating cliche.

The beauty of language, as soon as many people believe it means something, that is what it means now.

I think the common usage for the original begging the question would probably be tautological reasoning nowadays.

Both uses of “begging the question” are common, and since the fallacy sense is invariably intransitive and the “raising the question” sense transitive (specifying the question as a direct object), they aren’t even ambiguous. As a bonus, the transitive sense also makes a convenient rationalization of the fallacy sense (which on its own is a iffy translation into non-current English of the Latin name of the fallacy), which can be seen as (despite very different etymology) being equivalent to the transitive sense with “what is the justification of the premise being discussed?” as the implicit object.

The pedantry that approves only the intransitive usage and rejects the transitive usage is silly on several levels.

> Perhaps, but deliberately using the expression incorrectly is even sillier.

It's not incorrect, and calling it that is exactly the misguided pedantry referred to in GP.

> I'm not opposed to linguistic innovation if it makes the language more elegant or more expressive

The intransitive sense of “begs the question” does exactly that, and I explained how it does that in GP. Also, its been in common use long enough that it is hardly "innovation”; the persistent pedantic struggle against it is a reactionary struggle for linguistic regression. Which might still make some sense, if the usage was one which created confusion or obscured meaning, but its not.

begs the question is just so much more elegant and expressive than raise or prompts that it is really sort of funny to assert otherwise.

Having said this, on the internet, I must now defend it.

to beg in conversation is of course more energetic than raising or prompting. When you beg it is urgent, a question that has been raised can be tabled for later, a prompt can be ignored as we point at a different reporter we know is more likely to ask about how this affects the First Lady, but if the question is being begged it demands an answer from us.

To beg calls forth the image naturally, for those who think in images, of a beggar. A beggar has moral urgency, they need what we have to give, and that moral urgency of the image is transferred to the question implied by the subject of discussion.

To prompt or raise a question have absolutely no visual analogue, they are lifeless, bloodless, and should be buried before rotting.

Why do you think that this more common usage of beg the question has come into play? It's not (necessarily) ignorance, I believe the cause is that the phrasing in English far better supports what is wanted and this allowed the phrase itself to spread among the population as a tool for expressing thought.

If I'll annoy grammarians and pedants, and only they will think I'm ignorant, then that's okay with me.

Language isn't logical. It's a bricolage of things people have done to communicate. It's a mash-up of many different tools all trying to accomplish a hundred different things, and if people can't find a handy screwdriver, they may successfully use a butterknife instead.