Re: PC Manmonth

Subject: Re: PC Manmonth
From: "Beckton, Jon" <jbeckton -at- MHS7 -dot- TNS -dot- CO -dot- ZA>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 16:10:57 +0200

Melissa Morgan wrote:
> A very interesting side note here is a phrase many of us use fairly
> regularly, "As a
> rule of thumb." This phrase originated from the once prominent idea that
> it was
> acceptable for a man to beat his wife with a stick, so long as the stick
> was not
> larger in width than his thumb. It's pretty incredible what we can take
> for granted
> when it comes to language.
>
> PS--Always question the answers, and be aware that some of the most
> dangerous answers are the ones that most strongly resist questioning.
>
In the spirit of Melissa's PS, "Always question the answers" I offer the
following, taken from alt.use.english, which would seem to debunk the
wife-beating theory

"rule of thumb"
This term for "a simple principle having wide application but not
intended to be strictly accurate" dates from 1692. A frequently repeated
story is that "rule of thumb" comes from an old law regulating wife-beating:
"if a stick were used, it should not be thicker than a man's thumb." Jesse
Sheidlower writes at
<http://www.randomhouse.com/jesse/display.cgi?961108.html>:
"It seems that in 1782 a well-respected English judge named Francis
Buller made a public statement that a man had the right to beat his wife as
long as the stick was no thicker than his thumb. There was a public outcry,
with satirical cartoons in newspapers, and the story still appeared in
biographies of Buller written almost a century later. Several legal rulings
and books in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mention the
practice as something some people believe is true. There are also earlier
precedents for the supposed right of a man to beat his wife.
"This 'rule' is probably not related to the phrase 'rule of
thumb', however. For one thing, the phrase is [...] attested [earlier ...].
(Of course, it's possible that it was a well-known, but unrecorded, practice
before Buller.) Another problem is that the phrase 'rule of thumb' is never
found in connection with the beating practice until the 1970s. Finally,
there is no semantic link [... from what was presumably a very specific
distinction to the current sense 'rough guideline']. The precise origin of
'rule of thumb' is not certain, but it seems likely to refer to the thumb as
a rough measuring device ('rule' meaning 'ruler' rather than 'regulation'),
which is a common practice. The linkage of the phrase to the wife-beating
rule appears to be based on a misinterpretation of a 1976 National
Organization of Women report, which mentioned the phrase and the practice
but did not imply a connection. There is more information about this, with
citations from relevant sources, at the Urban Legends Archive."
Thumbs were used to measure *lots* of things (the first joint was
roughly one inch long before we started growing bigger, and French _pouce_
means both "inch" and "thumb"). The phrase may also come from ancient
brewmasters' dipping their thumb in the brew to test the temperature of a
batch; or from a guideline for tailors: "Twice around the thumb is once
around the wrist..."
For a definitive rule of thumb, see the paper "Thumb's rule tested:
Visual angle of thumb's width is about 2 deg." by Robert P. O'Shea in
_Perception_, 20, 1991, pp. 415-418.

Some food for thought?

Jon Beckton


From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=



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