Today I am made peevish by people who say things like, “This begs the question…”, when what they actually mean is, “This raises the question….”
Begging the question is one of the logical fallacies; it’s what you get when you start out by assuming as true the thing that you’re trying to prove. (It’s called petitio principii in Latin; or more informally, in English, circular reasoning.)
An amusing page on logical fallacies can be found here; a more detailed, if less amusing, page is here.
Dr. Doyle's Blog 