Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 23:06:03 -0500

From: Gregory {Greg} Downing downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU

Subject: Re: Rima's rule of thumb



At 03:25 PM 11/7/97 -0500, you wrote:

I hardly think the wife beating story is a fallacy!

I have read in several publications that the "rule of

thumb" originates from an English common law dictating the width of a

strap a husband could use to discipline his wife. The husband would use

his thumb as a rule to measure the width of the strap, hence the expression.

I have to question the validity of the beer story as a "rule of thumb". The

purpose of testing the heat has nothing to do with the thumb really. No

more than testing a baby's bottle could be called the "rule of wrist".

Granted, the popularity of the wife beating story doesn't mean it is

true but it is more believable than the "fingering the yeast

story"!!!





This is dueling folk-etymologies. I've read somewhere some analysis of the

beating-stick idea, something along the lines that in no legal record or law

case has anyone ever found one reference to such a rule, and how could there

be a legal rule that is never recorded in any legal code or mentioned in a

recorded law-case? Common law is especially long-lived and thus prone to

leaving traces in records. If such a law existed, there'd be have been tons

of court-cases hinging on the issue of whether a given beating was or was

not inflicted with a stick of the legally allowed size.



But without being an expert on this bit of lore, all I can add is that if

you read the OED2 cites of "rule of thumb" (back to 1692) there's no mention

of or hints at beating anywhere. There is however almost always a sense that

"rule of thumb" means something inexact -- hardly the sense of the word in

the "beating" account, where the "rule of thumb" refers to the exact size

something can legally be. I have heard accounts that tie "rule of thumb" to

sailing (measuring the needed thickness of a rope for a given task when as a

sailor you have no ruler) and tailoring (using the width of the thumb to

measure without a ruler or the like -- get it? *rule* of thumb.... Cf. OED2

rock n.3, meaning 1b, where "rock/rack of eye and rule of thumb" is a

tailors' phrase for inexact measurement).



If anyone has the *real* story and the evidence, maybe s/he'd cough it up.

The stick-story seems to have the same kind of origin as "history" = "his

story," which means it says a lot about our cultural interests and guilts in

the later 20C, but nothing at all about the actual origin of the phrase,

which is the topic at hand in real etymology.



Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu