- Joined
- Oct 14, 2010
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- British English
- Home Country
- Czech Republic
- Current Location
- Czech Republic
Well, I am not a fan of google to settle questions about language. I have just googled "I ain't done nothing yet", and got 3,290,000 hits. I don't think that anyone would take this as evidence that the utterance should be recommended.Oh I see. I didn't realise you are unaware of the use of "beggars the question".I do not expect you to take my word for it of course as I said in my previous post we can get language guidance from prominent and well educated native speakers as well as common usage. A google search which as is perfectly logical way to assess how many natives speakers use a word or phrase shows the term is in use.
As to 'beggar the question', I googled that - and found very few examples, while googling 'beg the question' brought up many. A search on the more relevant COCA for 'beg/begs/begging the question' brought up 49/276/25 examples. My search for 'beggar/beggars/beggared the question' brought up 0/0/0 examples.
This would suggest that the natural idiom for native speakers contains the word 'beg', not 'beggar'. I don't deny that some people might use 'beggar'. Some people can mangle any expression. It might even have been common in your school, possibly as a joke for those in the know.