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ABC's Bogus "Pope Joan" Story Also Hocked Debunked the "Rule of Thumb" Myth.
"The bogus story of "Pope Joan" was not the only fiction that ABC and Diane Sawyer tried to hustle on the American public in last night's Primetime (Thursday night). In trying to convey the environment of ninth-century Europe, host Diane Sawyer and a guest, Donna Cross (author of Pope Joan), promulgated the debunked feminist myth that the phrase "rule of thumb" originated from a centuries-old law about wifebeating. The popular hoax purports that a man was once allowed to clobber a woman as long as the club was no wider than his thumb.
"The 'rule of thumb' ... turns out to be an excellent example of what may be called a feminist fiction .
"That the phrase did not even originate in legal practice could have been ascertained by any fact-checker who took the trouble to look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes that the term has been used metaphorically for at least three hundred years to refer to any method of measurement or technique of estimation derived from experience rather than science.
"According to Canadian folklorist Philip Hiscock, 'The real explanation of 'rule of thumb' is that it derives from wood workers... who knew their trade so well they rarely or never fell back on the use of such things as rulers. Instead, they would measure things by, for example, the length of their thumbs'."
It's ironic that Ms. Hoff-Sommers notes that the truth could have been attained within about 30 seconds and access to a good dictionary.
____________________________________________________________
Ok, Wordsmiths, this is a word origin question.
Can you debunk the debunk?
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Hmm. The Cross book, Pope Joan, is a novel. Last I heard about the subject, Pope Joan was a legend. Lawrence Durrell also penned a novella yclept The Curious History of Pope Joan. As for the thumb thang, since when has reason had any power over word-lovers. YCLIU has about as much force as RTFM. I do like the Canuckian Ffolklorist's name, though. It's an old English one and pronoucned Hyrck. 
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
Hmm. The Cross book, Pope Joan, is a novel. Last I heard about the subject, Pope Joan was a legend. Lawrence Durrell also penned a novella yclept The Curious History of Pope Joan. As for the thumb thang, since when has reason had any power over word-lovers. YCLIU has about as much force as RTFM. I do like the Canuckian Ffolklorist's name, though. It's an old English one and pronoucned Hyrck.
I'm with you, zmjezhd, but you skirt the point...
Did the term "rule of thumb" ever refer to the thickness of a rod, and was that thickness ever considered to be legal and proper to beat a wrong-doing legal wife with?
Hmmm?
Last edited by themilum; 12/31/05 12:14 AM.
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TEd
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Even "The Bias-Free Word Finder," the bible of the Politically Correct Language Guardians among us, considers the wife-beating theory implausible and notes that it first surfaced in a 1986 letter to the editor in "Ms." magazine. So I guess the first "rule of thumb" in these cases is "Check your sources, lest they be hokum." - The Word Detective 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. - Wikipedia
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Thumbs up, tsuwm, thanks.
And to ted and mav a kiss and a thumb-of-the-nose for your wit.
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Quote:
I guess the first "rule of thumb" in these cases is "Check your sources, lest they be hokum." - The Word Detective
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. - Wikipedia
And the Discovery Science Channel is a fount of etymological wisdom.
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Thumb help you are, TEd!
I try to do what I can in this era of digital communication.
TEd
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… this era of digital communication.
That was a good one.
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