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Rule of Thumb Origin
Per The Phrase Finder – The ‘rule of thumb’ has been said to derive from the belief that English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it is was no thicker than his thumb. The phrase itself has been in circulation since the 1600s. The earliest known use of it in print appears in a sermon by the English puritan James Durham and printed in Heaven Upon Earth, 1685. The origin of the phrase remains unknown.
Rule of Thumb Meaning
Per Wikipedia – The English phrase rule of thumb refers to a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. It refers to an easily learned and easily applied procedure or standard, based on practical experience rather than theory. This usage of the phrase can be traced back to the seventeenth century.
Interesting Fact
Per Wikipedia -The phrase rule of thumb first became associated with domestic abuse in the 1970s, after which the spurious legal definition was cited as factual in a number of law journals, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report on domestic abuse titled “Under the Rule of Thumb” in 1982.During the 1990s, several authors correctly identified the spurious etymology; however, the connection to domestic violence was cited in some legal sources even into the early 2000s.
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