RE: OFF-TOPIC: resource for sayings

["Secara, Maggie" <MSecara -at- OMM -dot- com>]

Sorry, Ira, but that isn't true.  I'm sure you've heard it in more than one
place, but it still isn't true. (I knew eventually someone one would mention
this old lie.) This has never been an English law, and the phrase is several
hundred years older than the story that supposedly explains it.  But don't
believe me.  Look it up in one of the sources given yesterday.

Maggie Secara
~beating a hasty retreat

-----Original Message-----
From: Ira L. Jacobson [mailto:laser -at- ieee -dot- org]


>"As a rule of thumb"
>
>Anyone have a good resource on the Net for the origin
>of some of these sayings?

Mike, thank you.  Finally, after years of lurking, I have a contribution:

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law that stated 
that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.


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