Have you ever heard of people using the phrase "rate of speed" before? I have, mainly on TV during one of our local news. Usually it is during a description of some vehicular traffic incident, and some vehicle was described as moving at a "high rate of speed". What they really want to say is simply that the vehicle was moving very fast, but somehow, they think saying "high rate of speed" sounds "sexier".

This, of course, is rather inaccurate. Typically, when say say "rate of something", we usually mean the time rate of change. In calculus, it is d/dt of something, i.e. the time derivative. So when one say "rate of speed", one is actually saying ds/dt, where s is speed. This is ACCELERATION!

Now there's nothing wrong with this if the newscasters actually did intended to say acceleration (which begs the question on why they don't just say "acceleration"?). But more likely, they wanted to say "speed". So really, transposing "speed" into "rate of speed" is not only non-economical in terms of words to say, it is also no longer correct.

So, if you write for some news broadcast, and you want to say that a vehicle moves very fast, just say "high speed" and NOT "high rate of speed". If your producer or proof reader disagree, ask him/her to open a physics textbook.

Have you ever heard of people using the phrase "rate of speed" before? I have, mainly on TV during one of our local news. Usually it is during a description of some vehicular traffic incident, and some vehicle was described as moving at a "high rate of speed". What they really want to say is simply that the vehicle was moving very fast, but somehow, they think saying "high rate of speed" sounds "sexier".

This, of course, is rather inaccurate. Typically, when say say "rate of something", we usually mean the time rate of change. In calculus, it is d/dt of something, i.e. the time derivative. So when one say "rate of speed", one is actually saying ds/dt, where s is speed. This is ACCELERATION!

Now there's nothing wrong with this if the newscasters actually did intended to say acceleration (which begs the question on why they don't just say "acceleration"?). But more likely, they wanted to say "speed". So really, transposing "speed" into "rate of speed" is not only non-economical in terms of words to say, it is also no longer correct.

So, if you write for some news broadcast, and you want to say that a vehicle moves very fast, just say "high speed" and NOT "high rate of speed". If your producer or proof reader disagree, ask him/her to open a physics textbook.

Many English speakers use "begs the question" to mean "raises the question," or "impels the question," and follow that phrase with the question raised, for example, "this year's deficit is half a trillion dollars, which begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?" Philosophers and many grammarians deem such usage incorrect. Academic linguist Mark Liberman recommends avoiding the phrase entirely, noting that because of shifts in usage in both Latin and English over the centuries, the relationship of the literal expression to its intended meaning is unintelligible and therefore it is now "such a confusing way to say it that only a few pedants understand the phrase."

"Begging the question" is the term for a logical fallacy in which the truth of the statement is assumed, e.g., "Opium induces sleep because it has a soporific quality".

Actually... Speed is a scalar quantity. Velocity is a vector. And the rate of change of velocity is acceleration (speeding up, slowing down or changing direction)