There is hope!
Brandeis University in Massachusetts published one of those “Oppressive Language” lists, telling students that phrases and words like “ladies and gentlemen,” “policeman,” “picnic,” “people of color,” “rule of thumb” (don’t ask me!) were offensive to somebody, and should be avoided. Also “Take a stab at it,” “trigger warning,” and “beating a dead horse” (Too violent!), and “African-American,” “long time no see,” “lending a deaf ear,” and “handicapped space”.”” (Identity based!) Other examples include “Homeless person, “powwow,” “picnic,” “freshman,”and “mentally ill.”Once the list was publicized, the mockery sent Brandeis’s way was relentless, as well as deserved, even though the taboo list eventually had a disclaimer that the web page “is not a university expectation, requirement or reflection of policy.”
That didn’t help. Making the university look especially silly as well as hypocritical was Campus Reform’s report in June 2021 that Brandeis was still using many of the phrases and terms on the BadSpeak list. “Freshman” and “picnic,” for example, were still turning up in articles, blogs, and department materials. The Brandeis University Teacher Education Program Handbook also used the term “rule of thumb!”
Campus Reform reported last week that Brandeis quietly took down the list.
Ethics Alarms 
“rule of thumb”
Apparently this is one of those phrases with unpleasant origins, like the song “Ring Around the Rosie”. From what I understand, “rule of thumb” used to be the measure of thickness of an object that a man was permitted by law to use to beat his wife.
Just like no child thinks of the Black Death when playing schoolyard games, no one thinks of beating one’s wife when pondering best practices that have become the norm when using the phrase “rule of thumb”. At least, not in the minds of normal people who have little time on their hands to make up obnoxious lists.
That is a discredited etymology.
The origin of the phrase is as benign as it sounds, coming from a carpenter using his thumb to approximate measurements.
That makes more sense to me, but try to convince the lunatics out there who believe the other story. Until your post, I had only ever heard the one explanation.
The German for ‘rule of thumb’ is ‘faustregel’: literally fist-rule. I think this rules out the ‘stick no thicker than..’ story.
“Rosengurtie : Wait, rule of thumb? In the early 1900s it was legal for men to beat their wives, as long as they used a stick no wider than their thumb.
Connor : Can’t do much damage with that then, can we? Perhaps it should have been a rule of wrist?”
-Boondock Saints
I was going to make both the point AM did and then the point that Rich did. This is ultimately a niggardly issue – People think that they ought to be offended because they think that a myth is true. But I’ll go further and say that I think that the current crop of misinformation might be the 1999 Troy Duffy cult classic “Boondock Saints”, which everyone should watch, but the myth actually has deeper roots. Cokie Roberts (who names their kid that?) pointed this out on television in a 1994 segment on domestic violence.
But there might be some basis in truth to is as well. Francis Buller, an English judge in the 18th century, would be infamously remembered as “Judge Thumb” after being targeted the famous caricaturist James Gillray. Buller had said that matrimonial privilege allowed for a man could beat his wife as long as the punitive stick was no thicker than his thumb. There was an urban legend that the countess in the case had asked the judge to measure her husband’s thumb exactly, so that she might know the precise extent of his privilege, but the truth of that is in question.
But the saying “rule of thumb” predated Judge Thumb by centuries, and a single ruling (or even the half dozen or so I was able to find) does not actually constitute a law.
Thanks for that backstory. I haven’t seen “Boondock Saints” but I have met Sean Patrick Flanery because he was young Indiana Jones in the “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”
I have been accused of many things, but never beating my wife. That would be unethical.
These days, grade school, high school, and college students are groomed to be overly sensitive weaklings and the future enforcers of the Thought & Language Police. When the insanity continues to spread like an aggressive cancer, something has to give. The only real unknown is; what will that look like.
“Sticks and Stones…”
Odd, isnt it, how eager the left is to crack down on pre crime – with stiff penalties up to lifelong separation from natural rights – and yet they would happily see all penalties removed from anyone who commits ACTUAL crimes. It’s almost like the goal doesn’t have anything to do with crime, so much as just making it illegal for a many people as possible to own guns.