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Reader question: Please explain “beg to differ” in this sentence: “Mr. President, we beg to differ.” Why “beg”? My comments: Beg to differ literally means we beg your pardon; we want to express a different opinion. If you understand “beg” only in the sense of “First you borrow, then you beg”, I can understand the confusion. In “beg to differ”, though, as well as “beg your pardon”, there’s no begging in the sense of begging for food and money – no-one’s on their knees. Instead, it’s just a polite way of saying please, we don’t agree. “Beg to differ” is British in origin, must be. When a language has a long history, it develops a lot of indirect ways of expressing the same ideas. The British are known to be polite and careful with their language; many of them are at any rate. Whereas the Americans are known to be more straightforward and blunt. They like to call a spade a spade. Well, some of them are that way anyway, some of the younger ones especially – well, at least some Americans I know of are like that. I beg your pardon. I mean to be direct, but I want to be polite also; Therefore, I am choosing my words in order to avoid making sweeping generalizations. Anyways, I’ve worked with many British and American copy editors in my time. And one generalization I feel I can safely make is that when both the British and Americans are together discussing a certain topic, the British, especially the more experienced and older ones, are always polite with words. If they want to say something in the middle of a conversation, for example, they say something along the line “If I could make a personal remark…” | 
