I don't think it's lost at all. One mindful correction may lead the recipient to a lifetime of correct usage (and perhaps correcting others). The viral coefficient seems favorable.
It is not incorrect to use this expression, it can universally be understood to mean what the author meant through context, whereas the usage you consider correct is exotic.
You're getting downvoted, but thanks for posting this link. The blog post by Stan Carey (excerpted below) mentioned in it was quite interesting.
> Beg the question first appeared in English in a 1581 text of Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, and this translation has had semantic ripples down the centuries. The phrase is opaque because its use of beg is really not a good fit – it’s no wonder people have interpreted it ‘wrongly’. Had the original English translation been assume the conclusion or take the conclusion for granted instead of beg the question, there would be far less uncertainty and vexation.
> 269 out of 300 examples of begs the question used it to mean raises the question, more or less. That’s 90%. This figure show its huge predominance in contemporary discourse. Outside of formal debates and philosophical or semi-philosophical contexts, the traditional meaning of beg the question is hardly ever used. The evade the question use is rarer still.
> This is why insisting on the original use, as prescriptivists do, risks confusing many readers. It’s not a practical or constructive stance. Correctness changes with sufficient usage, yet sticklers still refuse to accept there can be more than one way to use this phrase. By adopting the tenets of one phrase → one meaning and original meaning = true meaning, they have painted themselves into a corner.
> The expression is ‘skunked’, to use Garner’s term. Grammarphobia agrees that it’s ‘virtually useless’, and Mark Liberman recommends avoiding it altogether. In formal use I advise caution for this reason, but in everyday use you’ll encounter little or no difficulty or criticism with the raise the question usage.
Additionally the LangLog link shows that "begging the question" is a result of badly translating a less than perfect translation. Greek to Latin and Latin to English.
> Some medieval translator (does anyone know who?) decided to translate Aristotle's "assuming the conclusion" into petitio principii. In classical Latin, petitio meant "an attack, a blow; a requesting, beseeching; a request, petition". But in post-classical Latin petitio was also used to mean "a postulate"
> Why begging the question? Well, petitio (from peto) in this context means "assuming" or "postulating", but it has other (and older) meanings, from which the notion of logical postulate or assumption arose: "requesting, beseeching". So rather than use some fancy Latinate term like postulate or assume, people decided to use the plain English word beg[ging] as a sort of calque for the "requesting" sense of petitio. But even in the 16th century, I think, it was a bit odd to warn people against presupposing the end-point of their argument by telling them not to beg their conclusion.
