Comments on: NC court gives thumbs down to ‘rule of thumb’ http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/index.php/2012/05/03/nc-court-gives-thumbs-down-to-rule-of-thumb/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nc-court-gives-thumbs-down-to-rule-of-thumb Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:08:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: John Wilcox http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/index.php/2012/05/03/nc-court-gives-thumbs-down-to-rule-of-thumb/comment-page-1/#comment-757521 John Wilcox Fri, 04 May 2012 19:31:42 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/?p=10603#comment-757521 Interesting, I too had heard that “rule of thumb” applied to the thickness of a branch. Good to know that isn’t true.

Looking up the information, it appears to possibly be a very very old saying with ties even to Persian where they had an ancient saying that translated to finger’s top rule.

]]> By: Jordyn D http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/index.php/2012/05/03/nc-court-gives-thumbs-down-to-rule-of-thumb/comment-page-1/#comment-757042 Jordyn D Thu, 03 May 2012 19:08:23 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/ncm/?p=10603#comment-757042 I’m glad to learn that this “rule” was not in fact a law in NC, and also not the origin of the phrase, as I believed when someone told me that a few years ago.

Incidentally, the other hypothesis about the origin of the phase (besides the popular theory that the thumb was literally used as a measuring device) is that beer brewers dipped their thumbs into a batch of beer to test the temperature before thermometers were invented. Who knew?

Jordyn

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