"Rule of Thumb" (was Re: racist opinion a crime)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Mar 30 14:35:02 PST 2001



>Carrol used the phrase, "rule of thumb, " I'd heard a few years
>ago about the origins of that phrase in the Middle Ages referring to the
>"proper" dimensions of a rod or stick to use to beat one's wife. A
>search on google just now brought up some hits. Unfortunately, the
>first one was from some anti-feminist website that used the
>disingenuous work of Christina Hoff Sommers. Other hits, more
>credible, on H-Net. So, just what is the truth regarding this?
>Michael Pugliese

***** Origin(s) of "Rule of Thumb"

Queries about the phrase "rule of thumb" have appeared repeatedly on WMST-L. What follows are some of the responses people have sent to the list. They have been put together in this file to make it easy to find this information without sending yet more queries (and responses) to WMST-L. For more compilations of WMST-L messages, see the WMST-L File List....

<http://www.research.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/ruleofthumb.html>. *****

Yoshie



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