to ask for as a gift, as charity, or as a favor: to beg alms; to beg forgiveness.
to ask (someone) to give or do something; implore: He begged me for mercy. Sit down, I beg you.
to take for granted without basis or justification: a statement that begs the very point we're disputing.
to fail or refuse to come to grips with; avoid; evade: a report that consistently begs the whole problem.
verb (used without object),begged,beg·ging.
to ask alms or charity; live by asking alms.
to ask humbly or earnestly: begging for help; begging to differ.
(of a dog) to sit up, as trained, in a posture of entreaty.
Verb Phrases
beg off, to request or obtain release from an obligation, promise, etc.: He had promised to drive us to the recital but begged off at the last minute.
Idioms
beg the question, to assume the truth of the very point raised in a question.
go begging, to remain open or available, as a position that is unfilled or an unsold item: The job went begging for lack of qualified applicants.
Origin of beg
1
before 900;Middle Englishbeggen, by assimilation from Old English*bedican, syncopated variant of bedecian to beg; compare Gothicbidagwa beggar. See bead
Related formshalf-beg·ging, adjectiveun·begged, adjective
2. Beg and request are used in certain conventional formulas, in the sense of ask.Beg, once a part of many formal expressions used in letter writing, debate, etc., is now used chiefly in such courteous formulas as I beg your pardon; The Committee begs to report, etc. Request, more impersonal and now more formal, is used in giving courteous orders ( You are requested to report ) and in commercial formulas like to request payment.
c.1200, perhaps from Old English bedecian "to beg," from Proto-Germanic *beth-; or possibly from Anglo-French begger, from Old French begart (see beggar). The Old English word for "beg" was wædlian, from wædl "poverty." Of trained dogs, 1816.
As a courteous mode of asking (beg pardon, etc.), first attested c.1600. To beg the question translates Latin petitio principii, and means "to assume something that hasn't been proven as a basis of one's argument," thus "asking" one's opponent to give something unearned, though more of the nature of taking it for granted without warrant.
To assume what has still to be proved: “To say that we should help the region's democratic movement begs the question of whether it really is democratic.”
Take for granted or assume the truth of the very thing being questioned. For example, Shopping now for a dress to wear to the ceremony is really begging the question—she hasn't been invited yet. This phrase, whose roots are in Aristotle's writings on logic, came into English in the late 1500s. In the 1990s, however, people sometimes used the phrase as a synonym of “ask the question” (as in The article begs the question: “What are we afraid of?”).
