Beat the Thumb Slowly

A feminist canard has been going around for years that the common expression "rule of thumb" refers to an old Canadian law (in England it is an old English law, in America an old US law) that allowed men to beat their wives with a stick no larger than the thickness fo their thumb.

A Woman's Studies professor advises that this is regularly taught in university Women's Studies courses.

It is not so.

It came up again recently on the Editors' Association of Canada email list. When someone found a reference speaking of it as a false etymology, they objected:

"I didn't think that there was any question about its origin from the laws on wife-beating. Certainly it has been quite legal for men to beat their wives in Canada."

A hard truth is always resisted; a confortable lie persists despite all evidence.

In the ensuing exchanges, despite other authorities assuring that there was no such law, and that the phrase comes from brewing or rough carpentry, she persisted. At last, she cited this bit of research from the "Word Origins" website as conclusive:

"Ms Fenick traced the idea back to a pronouncement that was supposed to have been made in 1782 by a British judge, Sir Francis Buller; this led to a fiercely satirical cartoon by James Gillray that was published on 27 November that year, in which Buller was caricatured as Judge Thumb....It might be that he never made the statement that rendered him so notorious. Edward Foss, in his Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England of 1864 says that to Buller "is attributed the obnoxious and ungentlemanly dictum that a husband may beat his wife, so that the stick with which he administers the castigation is not thicker than his thumb", but says he can't find any evidence Buller said it. But the Dictionary of National Biography and other standard works say firmly he did, as did contemporary biographies."


She concludes from this that the phrase should still be struck by editors whenever found: "So even though this is a persistent misrepresented etymology, there must be something to a phrase and its meaning that has been perpetuated since 1782. "

I quote my reply:

"This is not true; you are mixing up several distinct things:

1. the idea that there was once a law allowing men to beat their wives with a stick;

2. the idea that the common phrase “rule of thumb” comes from this, and

3. the fact that there is a common phrase “rule of thumb,” that has persisted for centuries.

The truth of the third in no way demonstrates the truth of the first or second. Thesis one is the only one directly addressed above: whether there ever was such a law anywhere. It concludes there was not. At most, one judge once somewhere thought it was okay—and this went so much against common opinion at the time that he has never been forgiven for it. That hardly suggests an established practice.

The OED is able to trace the term “rule of thumb” back to 1692, making it impossible that the phrase comes from Judge Buller’s attributed comment in 1782. This speaks, by reasonable inference, against thesis two as well. "


It was not my intent, when setting up this blog, to have it dwell so much on men's rights. But where the need exists,...

For the record, this false etymology seems to have been invented in the 1970s for political purposes.

Christina Hoff Sommers, in Who Stole Feminism?, finds first reference in a 1976 report by Del Martin to NOW, the US feminist organization. Her defenders now say Martin’s use was "whimsical."

Which is putting it diplomatically.

Those who subscribe to the false etymology, especially knowing it is false, are signing up for the sort of political manipulation of language and of history Orwell warned against in 1984; and to a deliberate defamation of males as well. It necessarily promotes the prejudicial notion than men beat women regularly in the past. Not that different, in principle, from the older claim that Jews poisoned wells, or that Indians stole things.