Talk:Rule of thumb

Untitled

The following statement is incorrect and was removed from the article...it is also somewhat irrelevant:

For most people, the crooked thumb held out at arm's length subtends an angle to the horizon roughly equal to one hour of time - in other words if the distance of the sun is a thumb's length (from tip to first joint) above the horizon, it is about one hour until sunset.

The thumb segment subtends an angle of approximately 3 degrees, and the sun travels this distance in 12 minutes, not an hour as incorrectly stated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.102.155.36 (talk) 05:49, 5 January 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Earth rotates 3 degrees in 12 minutes, but unless you live in the tropics the sun does not intercept the horizon at a right angle. The higher your latitude, the slower the sun sets, if it sets at all.

real etymology?

if it doesn't come from the wife-beating thing, where does it come from? Gkhan 08:17, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

The origins of this phrase may be far older dating back to the time of Caesar and the gladiator arena. Though the meaning was a bit more severe. Redbear62 (talk) 20:20, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

which caesar? i assume you mean julius or augustus? also, would you elaborate on the meaning back in ancient rome? and have you any evidence of this? i dont mean to question the validity of your statemdnt im simply curious-

Applejuiceandpeachh (talk) 04:57, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

He's referring to the supposed imperial Roman "thumbs down" gesture indicating that a gladiator was not reprieved, while "thumbs up" indicated that a gladiator was reprieved (would not die). I don't think it has much to do with "rule of thumb", which refers to approximate measurements... Churchh (talk) 07:10, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

spousal rape

I was just about to suggest that someone link this with spousal rape since they both have to do with archaic rituals concerning a man's rights over his wife. Are we certain this is an urban legend? Anyone else have an idea about its etymology?--Reverend Distopia 21:32, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

---

There is little doubt that the connection between wife beating and the term "rule of thumb" is mythical. The term is not referred to in Blackstones treatise on english common law as claimed in a 1982 report on wife abuse for the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Under the Rule of Thumb: Battered Women and the Administration of Justice

Probably the best on line resource for this appears at http://www.debunker.com/texts/ruleofthumb.html which is an excerpt from the Christina Hoff Summers book "Who Stole Feminism"

Material revealing the "Rule of Thumb" myth to be just that is widely available and a respectable information source such as Wikipedia ought not proffer obvious myths as reality

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22rule+of+thumb%22 DrDamage 15 May 2005

Removed the last sentence

Took out the sentence at the end, "Some believe this has nothing to do with the origin, though..." because it's both poorly written (good writers don't use elipses in that way) and doesn't make sense with the rest of the article.

Whether it's a wiktionary entry or not.

Looks longer than a wiktionary entry to me. See the wiktionary entry, which actually is a dictionary entry, and compare. --rerdavies 03:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Length is irrelevant, it's content that counts. Absolutly!!! This article is solely about the meaning and etymology of a phrase, not a concept. If there were actual legal rules of thumb, this would be encyclopedic, talking about them with brief mentions of other uses. But there aren't. It's just about the definition and etymology. —Simetrical (talk) 09:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Redarvies. Leon math 21:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Link to Heuristic

Should "heuristic" in the first paragraph point directly to "heuristic (computer science)"? I'm not sure. --Hcsteve 07:59, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't. The current link is correct. —Simetrical (talk) 06:01, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

etymology from the OED

Some facts from the Oxford English Dictionary:

• Earliest known use was in a book Fencing-Master by Sir W. Hope in 1692: "What he doth, he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art".
• In previous centuries, it primarily was used in contrast to scientifically-justified rules (as in the quote above): A rule of thumb was one that seemed to work, but had no theoretical or scientific justification for why it should work.

--Delirium 20:56, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Brewing etymology

From the article: According to the Discovery Science Channel's TV show, "Discoveries This Week" on 19 September 2005, the term comes from brewery industry before the advent of thermometers. The man in charge of aiding yeast would stick his thumb into the vat to check the temperature. This is doubtful, however, as beer is easily contaminated and ruined by casual contact with unsterilized equipment, much less a thumb.

I have doubts about this as the etymology of the term, but not for the reasons stated above. Although many homebrewers today like to think of their brewing method as more sterile than an operating room, this isn't really necessary. Beer has been brewed a lot longer than bleach and no-rinse sanitizers and indeed long before the role of microorganisms in food spoilage was known. Plunging a clean thumb into wort wouldn't necessarily ruin the batch. However, if the test is to see if the wort is cool enough to add the yeast, this wouldn't work. Heat becomes painful to the skin above at least 125 F, but this temperature would kill almost all of the yeast. Yeast shouldn't be added until the wort is at most 80 F. I fail to see how sticking a thumb into the wort would help one in determining this. Penismightierthanthesword 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It also doesn't make much sense because the phrase is stated to have originated in the very late 17th century, and simple thermometers were commonly available well before that. I think we should take it out, or at least note more strongly in the article that this is very unlikely. Kafziel 22:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Major Rewrite

Well, applying the "Be Bold" motto of WP, I went through and tried to reformat this article to regain some clarity in it's content. It seemed (to me at least) that there was alot of conjecture, and confusion especially around the use of this term and possible connections with domestic violence... Understandable that people have strong feelings about that topic, but it was causing more confusion than it was clearing as it stood here.

There was also a mixture of possible and unlikely origins for the term all mashed together - this term (or at least it's use as a measurement technique) has been around for longer than modern laws, so, whether it was used in any laws at a later stage I have strong doubts that that is it's origin.

Feel free to re-add some of the content which I culled, but, in the interests of all, if we can try and keep the division between mis-conceptions regarding it's origin and plausible origins, as well as a chronological order to any references, I think it will keep this article alot clearer. (Before this edit there were a number of references and quotes which all claimed to be the first instance of the term being used).

--Lucanos 23:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Some restorations

The rewrite does bring the focus of the article back to where it should be, but there is reason it got muddled in the first place. There is a significant number of people who believe the term originated in 18th century laws regarding wife beating. Since the rewrite, someone has been repeatedly putting that opinion back in.

It's better that the article contain some facts regarding the connection of the term to domestic violence. I've restored a reference to Del Martin's usage of the term which in all likelihood is the reason for the popularity of the belief (much more so than Boondock Saints). I've also restored the reference to Sharon Fenick who did the legal research on the subject (the rewrite removed Fenick but left Quinion, but Quinion merely quotes Fenick).

--jpd 17 June 2006

Supreme Court of North Carolina: State v. Richard Oliver, 1874 WL 2346 (N.C.)

In a decision by Judge Settle in 1874:

"We may assume that the old doctrine, that a husband had a right to whip his wife, provided he used a switch no larger than his thumb, is not law in North Carolina." State v. Richard Oliver, 1874 WL 2346 (N.C. 1874).

This 1874 decision clearly overrules the use of the custom. While the practice is certainly not a myth, the usage of the phrase "rule of thumb" would take more research.

Msross78 00:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Rm trnaswiki tag

I removed the transwiki tag because I felt it was used inappropriately here. There's a full article here, so the wiktionary link should be enough to alert users that there's also an entry at wiktionary. If you disagree with my action, you can revert me or discuss it here. Peace, delldot | talk 17:41, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Pelvis spacing

I've also heard from an anthropology professor of mine that "rule of thumb" refers to the fact that, regarding the skeletal system, one can stick a thumb in the pelvic bone of a female skeleton and wiggle their thumb whereas with males one cannot. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Maika0* (talk • contribs) 23:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

Rearranged sections

I have rearranged order of the 'Origins' section. Since no conclusive evidence exist on the origin of the saying I think that simple explanations that derive from common crafts should go before the more elaborate ones. I'm especially sceptical of the fact that Del Martins thesis as of 1976 (that the term comes from a legislation that would restrict/allow wife beating) seems to be the primary explanation of the saying in the article.

Apocryphal etymology

I am troubled that this page contains more on the "wife-beating" rule of thumb nonsense than the actual origin. I think giving this much attention to the false origin rather than the true one contributes to the popularity of the false story and thus the acceptance of the falsehood as fact. 71.113.247.118 (talk) 14:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Since it's been floating around in folklore or urban legend since the 18th-century, and received a new boost of popularity in the last 30 years, the wife-beating story is fairly strongly associated with this phrase, incorrectly or correctly... Churchh (talk) 05:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

"It is often claimed that the term originally referred to a law that limited the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife, but this has been fully discredited as a hoax." The only citation here is third-party article about an anti-feminism book from a right-wing, anti-feminist author. To equate political spin with objective evidence that something has been "fully discredited" does Wikipedia a disservice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.3.0 (talk) 01:32, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I said "partially discredited", but then someone insisted on changing it to "fully discredited". It's clear that there never was a law or prevailing legal interpretation based on the thumb-sized stick rule, but on the other hand, the Judge Buller story was fairly well known, and a husband did in fact have the right to use limited physical force to make his wife obedient... Churchh (talk) 07:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Origin Section is an Incoherent Mess

1. The idea that the "thumb-diameter stick rule" is the origin of the phrase "Rule of Thumb" is not a "hoax"; it is misinterpretation of what Del Martin wrote, which has since blossomed into an urban legend. The word "hoax" implies intent to deceive, and there has certainly been no evidence of that.

2. Whether there was ever a "thumb-diameter stick rule" is an entirely different subject, and quite off-topic for this article; to make matters worse, this section does not distinguish enough between the concept of whether (and to what extent) the "thumb-diameter stick rule" ever existed and the concept of whether it was the origin of the "Rule of Thumb", which only serves to confuse the reader as to what actually is being discussed.

3. My guess is that part of the problem is that the editors have been using anti-feminist sources and have been carrying over the agendas of those sources into the article. There are plenty of academic sources that can be used. I suggest starting with:

Kelly, Henry Ansgar. "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick." Journal of Legal Education. September 1994.[1]

68.73.114.58 (talk) 09:00, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what Del Martin specifically wrote, but it's been claimed or implied by various people in the last 30 to 40 years that the thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing was once part of the formal judicial Common Law of English-speaking countries, whereas it's quite clear that the thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing was never part of the formal judicial Common Law of English-speaking countries; so to that extent there has been a need for debunking, and this article will need to report on such debunking (and it's not in fact off-topic). Any extended discussion of the right of husbands to use moderate physical force on their wives to enforce obedience (something which did exist under the formal judicial Common Law of English-speaking countries) would be off-topic here (though it certainly can be mentioned). Churchh (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be confused about the topic of this article. The topic is the phrase "Rule of Thumb" (which you don't even refer to in your above comment) *not* the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing". There is of course a need in this article to de-link "Rule of Thumb" from the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing", but debunking the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing" is off-topic here. If you wish to do that, start a separate article about the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing". That would go a long way to correcting this mess.68.73.114.58 (talk) 09:25, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The topic of the article is not the phrase "Rule of Thumb", any more than the article Rule of inference is about the phrase "Rule of Inference". The false etymology has considerable currency & must be dealt with. This will necessarily include some reference to the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing", which can hardly be mentioned without a few words about the "thing"'s origin (Buller accused by Gillray) and status as a non-law. Ewulp (talk) 00:07, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

---

This section has become feminist apologist's rant. It justifies the connection between rule-of-thumb and wife beating with a one-sided argument. Hoff-summers and others have shown that there is plenty of evidence of attempt to deceive in this connection, so 'hoax' is an appropriate, albeit controversial, label. My first choice would be to omit the "thumb-sized-stick-to-beat-wife thing" altogether other than stating it to be untrue. But if authors insist on justifying the connection, there must be more explanation of its misuse by feminists. Rgswanson (talk) 18:50, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that. Feminism isn't mentioned until the final two sentences of a two-paragraph passage. Hoaxing may have been involved in the modern era, but the idea has been lingering since at least 1782, and so is hardly a "feminist hoax" overall, and deserves coverage of its pre-feminist history. And Hoff-Summers is quite controversial herself. The law professor "Romulus" thing mentioned on the Christina Hoff-Summers article is not on this article. Churchh (talk) 04:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Mnemonic

Removed "See also mnemonic" from the first paragraph. What does the Rule of Thumb have to do with mnemonics? If there's a link between the two, state it. Akel Desyn (talk) 05:25, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Width of thumb?

"Thumb as measurement device

The term is thought to originate with wood workers who used the width of their thumbs (i.e. inches) rather than rulers for measuring things"

I thought that the length of the thumb from tip to first joint was approximately an inch. 212.219.75.245 (talk) 14:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

What is short and close at hand?

Essentially a mnemonic for a rule that can be easily remembered because it is short and close at hand like the thumb. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inning (talk • contribs) 10:54, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Art, architecture, and ancient engineerinvg

This article says nothing about the use of the thumb neither by artists for measuring, nor by Renaissance, medieval, and ancient architects, builders, and engineers for measuring things relative to the expert's thumb. Such a procedure was useful for estimating the heights of towers, columns, temples, bridges, etc.
I think that the knowledge of such antiquated things has been lost among the general public (which cares little), but I studied it in a three-course sequence called "Technology and Civilization" in college. Such courses are quite popular at schools like Auburn University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, which I know well because I have degrees from both schools.
Don't they have courses like this at M.I.T., Cornell, G.W.U., the Univ. of Michigan, the Univ. of Texas, the Univ. of California, Stanford, and U.S.C. ? 98.67.160.114 (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits

What does the edit summary "no WP:FRINGE views from Judge Thumb that was ridiculed even in the day. Fringe is covered adequately" even mean? Who is "Judge Thumb" whose views are declared to be WP:FRINGE? I re-attributed Matthew Hale's opinion to Matthew Hale per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:Primary. And I restored the quote from the JAC journal. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 16:52, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The references to the judges that ever used "rule of thumb" were ridiculed. Every source that has searced the history of "rule of thumb" has found the interpretation as "wife beating" rule to be lacking any credibility. It's a WP:FRINGE viewpoint and it is adequately covered in this article. Adding fringe material is WP:UNDUE considering how many sources say "It has nothing to do with wife beating." Your two citations roundly reject it's origins and meaning. Your quote of Blackstone doesn't even mention a rule of thumb and the source you quoted it from rejects that wife beatings were legal in Blackstones day. It's an entire treatise on how the "rule" didn't exist in English common law, canon law or Roman law. --DHeyward (talk) 00:24, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

And what sources do you have to support your claim? Chris Troutman (talk) 01:30, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: His own source for one: Kelly, Henry Ansgar (September 1994). "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick". Journal of Legal Education 44 (3): 341–365.[2] it's available on JSTOR.[3] It's free. Sonicyouth is misquoting it greatly. None of what he's written is an accurate summation. It's a fringe view that "Rule of thumb" has a legal history of wife beating and his use of Kelly is egregiously misquoting. This is the source where SY alleges Blackstone allowed for wife beating. Kelly says exactly opposite of what SY says. Kelly disputes that Blackstone acknowledges legal wife beating (let alone a "rule of thumb"). --DHeyward (talk) 05:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

How absurd. This is a direct quote from Blackstone: "But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds; and the husband was prohibited to use any violence to his Wife, aliter quam ad virum, ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae, licite et rationabiliter pertinet." You can find that quote everywhere. Kelly quotes this exact sentence on page 356. It's freaking unbelievable that you are disputing that Blackstone wrote that, that Kelly quoted it and that I used this exact quote in the article. Stop following me around and targeting my sourced additions! --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 12:19, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Two Points: What does it have to do with the rule of thumb? and Kelly explains the primary source quote further on if you bothered to read it and concludes that Blackstone was not referring to the law in his time. Look below and you will see Kelly asking people to quit maligning Blackstone by saying wife beating was accepted in his time. You don't seem to have the whole source and since Kelly, the expert, disagrees with you, we need to stick to the reliable sources. There is nothing from Kelly that concludes "Rule of Thumb" was anything more than a fringe theory. I pointed you to this article when you made the same fringe points elsewhere. The fact you are adding Blackstone quotes here that have nothing to do with the article is your attempt at desperation. When you get the whole Kelly source, read it. --DHeyward (talk) 15:14, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Here is Kelly's interpretation which is the next sentence from the source (pg 364-365)

In fact, Blackstone limits his observation about the lower rank of people to their insisting on the old law of wife-beating, which was no longer recognized by the courts. He does not limit the courts' allowance of restraints upon wives to any particular class of people, and he says nothing about any failure of the courts to enforce their new interpretation of the law.

He clearly disagrees with any interpretration that Blackstone believed the law allowed wife beating. He goes on:

...from Blackstone through the American judges if the last century to the modern writers on wife-beating, we see a tendency to believe that customs were worse in the earlier eras and other lands than in the writer's own more enlightened time and place.... No one likes to be associated with wife abuse. But we must all guard against unfairly accusing others of harboring beliefs or engaging in practices for which there is no evidence and we should be concerned to give due credit to those in the past tried to mitigate the harsh customs and practices of others.

It's an article that refutes even the slightest notion that "Rule of thumb" was a legal term for abuse. --DHeyward (talk) 05:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

And the intro:

Here's the intro to his piece where he Kelly talks about the topic of his paper:

The venerable and innocuous expression "rule of thumb" has taken a beating in recent years. It has been given a phony origin as designating an allowable weapon for wife-beaters, and in consequence there has been an effort to boycott its traditional usage because of the supposedly sinister circumstances of its beginnings. I propose to first look at genuinely documented uses of "rule of thumb" and then study incidences of the false interpretation and try to find the likely path of its development, Next I discuss instances in which the thumb (or some related measure) has been used to describe switches. Finally, I examine some earlier allegagations of allowable wife-chastisement in English law, Roman law and canon law.

--DHeyward (talk) 05:55, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The final page calls for everyone to stop maligning "rule of thumb" because there is no evidence to suggest it has any origin in wife-beating. --DHeyward (talk) 06:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Note that SY86 and now Binksternet has restored material allegedly from that paper by Kelly. But it's false. Kelly says no such thing. --DHeyward (talk) 05:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Kelly's work is analyzed by Professor Jennifer Freyd and she concludes that, while Kelly is correct in that the phrase "rule of thumb" did not refer to the size of tool used for wife beating, historic law cases prove that there was indeed a tradition allowing a husband to punish his wife with a small whip or stick, and that this tradition was upheld by courts. She says she looked at the same evidence Kelly looked at, and that Kelly's beliefs led him to his contrary conclusion. Binksternet (talk) 03:12, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I didn't bring Kelly into the debate, only corrected the gross mischaracterization attributed to him by SY86 and as such have read the entire article. I note the Freyd appears to be a non-peer reviewed essay while Kelly is published in a peer reviewed journal. Freyd also agrees with virtually everything Kelly writes. Kelly acknowledges apocryphal account of various stick sizes. The takeaway though is that common law was fairly amorphous prior to 1600 and there were hardly standards. I disagree that Freyd concluded the stick tradition was upheld. What Kelly and Freyd both say is judges and lawyers that used common law apocryphal account of various stick sizes as acceptable instruments of assault were ridiculed (included in our article is the cartoon of "Judge Thumb"). She mentions that some cases were dismissed where a husband hit his wife with a stick though I don't think her conclusion of dismissal=acceptable is as persuasive as Kelly's detailed account of the law (as well as referencing gross mistakes made by a couple judges that repeated "legal stick sizes." We have domestic violence cases today without legal punishment (i.e. read the news on the NFL). Freyd's essay, especially by her last sentence, is that the popular feminist movement of the day to boycott the phrase as being offensive is really not supported and domestic violence prevention shouldn't be sidetracked by the phrase. I don't believe there is much offense taken by that phrase today nor is there any remaining serious attempts to remove it from the lexicon. She acknowledges Kelly as the foremost authority on it. If you read our article, it mentions the same legal cases that Freyd mentions. --DHeyward (talk) 07:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Examples

• Musical: Joseph MacDonald, in his book Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe (c. 1760), wrote:

  The first Composers of Pipe Music having never heard of any other Instrument or known any of the Rules ever invented of Musick ... it may not be improper to discover the general rule by which they Taught & regulated their Time (having neither of Common or Triple Time, Crotchet or Quaver) but only their Ear to which they must only trust. This Rule we may more properly Call The Rule of Thumb. In effect it is Much the same, for it was by the four Fingers of the Left hand that all their Time was measurd & regulated E.G An Adagio in Common Time of Such a Style must not exceed or fall short [of] Such a number of Fingers, otherwise it was not regular. If the March was to be but a short Composition, the Ground must be of So many fingers; for Bars they had no notion of; if a Gathering, commonly of Such a Number, If a Lament, If a March, & c. according to the Occasion it must Consist of Such a Number.

• Tailors' Rule of Thumb: This is the fictional rule described by Jonathan Swift in his satirical novel Gulliver's Travels:

  Then they measured my right Thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical Computation, that twice round the Thumb is once around the Wrist, and so on to the Neck and Waist, and by the help of my old Shirt, which I displayed on the Ground before them for a Pattern, they fitted me exactly.

I removed these examples because they have no references to reliable secondary sources for establishing due weight. Entire sections based on primary sources like this run into problems of original research. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:36, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Miscellaneous content

The phrase also exists in other languages, for example Italian Regola del pollice, Swedish tumregel, Norwegian and Danish tommelfingerregel, sometimes in the variant "rule of fist", for example Finnish nyrkkisääntö, Estonian rusikareegel, German Faustregel and Pi mal Daumen, Hungarian ökölszabály or Dutch vuistregel, as well as in Turkish parmak hesabı, and in Hebrew כלל אצבע (rule of finger) and in Persian قاعده سرانگشتی, which is translated as "finger tip's rule".

This sense of thumb as a unit of measure also appears in Dutch, in which the word for thumb, duim, also means inch.

The use of a single word or cognate for "inch" and "thumb" is common in many Indo-European languages, for example, French: pouce inch/thumb; Italian: pollice inch/thumb; Spanish: pulgada inch, pulgar thumb; Portuguese: polegada inch, polegar thumb; Swedish: tum inch, tumme thumb; Sanskrit: angulam inch, anguli finger; Slovak: palec, Slovene: palec inch/thumb, Czech: palec inch/thumb. Also in some other languages such as Thai: nîw inch/finger, Hungarian: hüvelyk inch/thumb.

Following WP:SYNTH and WP:INDISCRIMINATE, I've removed these paragraphs pending the discovery of sources that directly relate this info to the article topic. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Sources January 2018

Parking these references here until I have time to incorporate them into the text:

• Clapp, James E.; Thornburg, Elizabeth G.; Galanter, Marc; Shapiro, Fred R. (2011). Lawtalk: The unknown stories behind familiar legal expressions. Yale University Press. pp. 219–. ISBN 0-30-017817-4.
• O'Conner, Patricia T.; Kellerman, Stewart (2009). Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. Random House. pp. 123–126. ISBN 978-1-58-836856-0.
• Tyler, Tom (2010). "The Rule of Thumb" (PDF). JAC. 30 (3/4): 435–456. JSTOR 20866960.
• Wallace, Paul Harvey; Roberson, Cliff (2016). Family Violence: Legal, Medical, and Social Perspectives. Routledge. pp. 50–53. ISBN 978-1-31-724053-2.
• Wilton, David (2008). Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-974083-3.

See also "Rule of thumb" etymology on Google Books. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 11:14, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Rule of thumb -- abbreviation is in tehnical texts is: ROT .

Abbreviation of "Rule of thumb" in technical texts is: "ROT". (Like here: https://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:30011178429375) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.190.134.155 (talk) 11:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Proposed link and if myth

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

That the rule of thumb existed appears to be overwhelmingly demonstrable historically, although less so in legal research. I wrote an article elsewhere; I wrote it for a website of mine, thus is akin to a blog; I may have a conflict of interest in adding it myself to this article. I propose to add it as an external link in this article. And anyone is welcome to draw on sources cited therein to edit this article.

I agree that the phrase predates the judge's birth and comes from other contexts and that the name of the rule may not have been applied to the substance of the rule until much later. And the judge may only have said it in an informal context, such as while riding a coach with a lawyer, and not at a trial, but even so it would have informed lawyers about what could be expected from the judge if a client raised the issue, and that would have been part of law, where law is that which will be enforced by third parties such as courts and is not limited to statutes and similar kinds of noncase law. Nor was the rule an outlier; various jurisdictions had more brutal laws. And some later courts, even when modifying or overturning the rule, acknowledged that there was such a rule. While myth arose around the rule, that does not make the rule itself myth.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:27, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for taking an interest in the topic. However, Wikipedia:External links says we should avoid links to blogs except those written by a recognized authority; can you show that you are such an authority? The guideline also says we should avoid links that give undue weight to minority views. The majority view, according to sources used in the article, is that no such rule existed (Wilton 2004, p. 39, Wallace & Roberson 2016, p. 51) and that the story of Buller's remark is an unproven myth (Foyster 2005, p. 12), merely a "rumor" with "no substantial evidence" to support it (Clapp 2011, p. 220). Kelly says that the idea of such a rule existing in law is "even more dubious. Rather, it seems to have been effectively laughed out of court" (1994, p. 351). So your thesis appears to be very much in the minority. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Double answer:

No, I am not such an authority, so therefore no link, per the guideline.

However, it is not my thesis vs. sources cited here but some of the sources in my website article vs. sources cited here and the opposing sources I cited. In the 19th century it was contended that Judge Buller said the statement. Courts contended it. Some did say the opposite, which is why I laid out the evidence I had. Most or all of the sources I cited in my website article are thus usable here. It is error to dismiss an argument on the ground of the conclusion reached. This minority view, if minority, qualifies for due weight when sources are cited, and I have provided some for anyone to use.

Sources you cite per Google Books as accessed today: On Wilson 2004: No, it was not codified but law is not limited to that which was codified (this is well known for common law but is true of probably most legal systems except the youngest) and is irrelevant on the noncodification argument. Whether it never existed is strongly disputed; Wilson, if I were to view the entire source, might be cited as supporting one side of the existence argument but appparently is not dispositive on it. The Wallace & Roberson 2016 snippet is too short for clarity; Blackstone isn't the source for the substance of the rule of thumb per se, I can't tell which two cases are being referred to, and the time period the authors are discussing is not identified in the snippet so whether the substance of the rule was nonexistent or no longer law can't be judged for the time period and a post-Buller time period may be irrelevant. On Foyster 2005, a "formal" capacity surrounding the pronouncing of the rule is not needed if lawyers at the time understood how the law would be understood by a judge with jurisdiction and likely would advise their clients accordingly. Informal pronouncements are common and the rule's substance appears, contrary to Foyster's view, to indeed have become a legal precedent in the U.S., if short-lived, at least in North Carolina. Clapp 2011 appears to rely on repeating an earlier statement; nothing wrong with doing so and I do so, too (I think referencing the same older statememt), but repetitions do not add authority and I point out that the most common research I saw (if not derivative) generally appears to have been within techniques of legal research rather than of historical research, a distinction I made in my website article, both sets of techniques being useful for different purposes.

The Kelly 1994 JStor content of p. 351 is not available to me at the moment (I can see only p. 341, a preview), but, considering your statement, the rule, if it existed, was not laughed out of every court that considered it and does not consider the reason for a court rejecting it (one court considered such beatings to be too trivial for litigation and that court was in a different jurisdiction of place than where Buller sat, so that laughing out of court is not the same as saying that there's no such rule) and thus Kelly's statement, if true even metaphorically, is irrelevant. I mention Kelly in my website article, for further research.

I don't think I should here recap the evidence on the existence; the website article lays it out.

Thank you for considering the request.

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:06, 30 March 2019 (UTC) (Corrected: 20:15, 30 March 2019 (UTC))

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Unnecessary politicizing language

Under Folk etymology it is written: "... and wife beating did continue" This is unnecessary, since it should be clear to anyone that from the existence of a law making something a crime, it does not follow that the illegal activity will cease to exist entirely. You would not find it necessary to include such a statement for murder, theft etc. Wikipedia is a cyclopedia, not a political arena, and politicization even subtle should be prohibited and I intend to make sure of that. Petarded (talk) 10:33, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I've restored the text. It's not "politicization" to summarize factual information reported by published, reliable sources. In any case, Wikipedia is not censored, so finding a given statement to be controversial or "political" is not a sufficient reason to remove it. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 17:50, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Italicized title

Per WP:ITALICTITLE, "Use italics when italics would be used in running text; for example, taxonomic names, the names of ships, the titles of books, films, and other creative works, and foreign phrases are italicized both in ordinary text and in article titles." Rule of thumb is none of those things, and is not italicized in running text (I italicized it just now because the phrase is being discussed as a phrase, but you would do that with any word considered as a word; for instance, "Duck can be either a noun or a verb"). Countless examples can be found to demonstrate that this phrase is not ordinarily italicized; see here; here; here; here; here; and so on. Generally, names of articles in [Category:English_phrases] are not italicized. Ewulp (talk) 06:26, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Erroneous etymology

I don't understand why most of the lead is an erroneous "folk" etymology. We obviously can mention the folk etymology in the lead as it's in the body, but the real etymology would be more on topic. I tried doing this but it was reverted. Volunteer1234 (talk) 19:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

The lead section should summarize the article as a whole. Most of the article text, and most of the sources, discuss the folk etymology. Hence it's the main reason for the phrase's notability. If you have comparable sources that focus on the "real" etymology, feel free to add them. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

The real etymology is already there. I moved it to the lead and you reverted that move. It's also weird to have an article about such a common phrase be devoted to an erroneous etymology rather than the actual topic. I guess we differ in that I think the common phrase is notable in it's correct usage, and you are saying that the incorrect etymology is the notable thing. Volunteer1234 (talk) 20:04, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

You didn't move the "real" etymology to the lead section, because it was already covered in the first paragraph. Notability is determined by coverage in published sources, not the opinions of Wikipedia users. The "actual topic" includes what sources say about the topic. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:09, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Serious neutrality, weight and balance issues

This article is a mess... It's almost entirely made up of (or at least dominated by) anecdotal "factoids" attempting to further a discredited fringe theory that itself was based off of misunderstandings. The average person has likely never even heard about this supposed alternative origin of the term. Undue weight alone is serious enough to warrant a major rewrite. One way or another this needs to be reviewed carefully. 74.141.37.107 (talk) 03:38, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

The article has plenty of references, so after reading it, the average person will be better informed. Otherwise, please show where the predominant views of published, reliable sources differ from those presented in the article, specifically which parts are used to further a discredited fringe theory, and suggest a way to fix it. Thank you. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:58, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

This article lacks citations

The rule of thumb as a domestic abuse issue was mentioned at least as far back as a 1917 Virginia law review article. 2600:1011:A18F:E540:D033:B040:4125:D24E (talk) 03:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)