Why in the living heck do they say that the Nuggets are "within" two points of the Lakers? "Within" means less than than the proclaimed margin — 1.9 points perhaps. Why not say that the Nuggets are two points behind? Or trailing by two points? But not — goodness gracious — "within." It's a perpetually annoying piece of basketball-announcer slang and a good reason to keep the TV sound muted. Moreover, why, given everything that I know about language change and about prescription versus description, does such an ugly locution fill me with grievous indignation?
And by all that's holy, "beg the question" does not mean "raise the question" or "leads to the question." "Beg the question" is a term in logic which means that the conclusion is implicit in the premise. It's a form of circular argumentation. Aristotle first defined petitio principii and his analysis served until a dozen or score of years ago, when, for some reason, "beg" became confused with "beget." Let's try to hold the line on this one– we need all the logic we can muster in these perilous times.
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