@cstross@wandering.shop Seems to me that the things you get when hungry are both pangs and pains. "Pangs" is more traditional and a bit more specific, but "pains" isn't a _mistake_ in the way that e.g. "mute point" is. I think there's literally (like, _literally_ literally_) no situation where using "begging the question" is a good idea other than when you know all the people you're talking to well enough to know how they will understand it. A lot of the problem here is that "begging the question" is a really unnatural way (in modern English) to say the thing it traditionally means, and rather a natural way (in modern English) to say the thing it often means nowadays, and both of those are things it's reasonable to want to say. So I say something like "assumes what you're trying to prove" when I mean _petitio principii_, and "raises the question" when I mean the other thing. (Sometimes I might say something like "begs the question, in the original sense": if I'm talking to people whom I know _know_ the original sense but there isn't enough common knowledge -- everyone knows that everyone knows, etc. -- that they can safely assume that I am using the words that way without further clarification.)