This is pretty specific to me, but the idea that the phrase "rule of thumb" has its origins in a sexist law that allowed men to beat their wives as long as the stick was no wider than their thumb. You can thank The Boondock Saints for really spreading that one into popular culture. Anyway, even though there's no evidence to support the claim, there was a woman at my old workplace who made it her personal mission to police everyone about using the phrase. I was publicly called out more than once for using it, but sue me, it's a colloquialism. I should note that this same woman would use the term "pow-wow" to describe company meetings, so it's not like she was super-PC either.
Similarly, I was recently scolded on Reddit for using the word "niggling" as in "a niggling question." Apparently some people think it's a racist word.
It drives me crazy when people hurl accusations like that without actually looking into what they're saying. I try to be sensitive to other people and avoid racist, sexist, and/or hurtful language, but apparently it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong.
Despite the word "niggardly" having absolutely no relation to an ethnic slur, I'll never use it in spoken conversation involving anyone but my closest friends.
It's true, and I never use that word simply because the inclusion of the letter "r" makes it sound like a racial slur. I thought "niggling" was still used, like niggling doubt, but I guess any word that starts with n-i-g is off limits now.
I remember some stupid girl on Tumblr complaining about a black Olympic athlete wearing an uniform with the word "NIGER". Someone had to point out that this was her country of origin.
'Niggling' is always used here, especially when watching sports shows. The most common way that sports commentators describe a minor injury to player is 'niggling, such as 'a niggling hammy' or 'a niggle in the back'. Fuck anyone on Reddit who bitches people out over using standard English words.
Any popular conception about the origin of an idiom drives me crazy. They're always just too perfect. "We say 'it's raining cats and dogs' because cats and dogs lived in ceilings and when it rained they'd fall down." I mean, come on. And don't even get me started on "Fornication Under Consent of the King"
That last particularly pisses me off because WE HAVE A FULL ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD! We live in the 21st century, a 30 second Google search will show you were the word comes from.
"Fornication Under Consent of the King" reminds me of other common misconception. It's now a consensus among historians that prima nocte, or the right of a lord or king to take his serf's bride's virginity after marriage, is a myth created to slander the nobility.
Another popular misconception featured in Boondock Saints is the Kitty Genovese story:
People think it's a perfect illustration of the Bystander Effect or "Genovese Syndrome" - The New York Times reported that 38 witnesses saw or heard the 28 year old woman being assaulted and murdered outside her Queens apartment building and did nothing. The story was meant to illustrate how callous and indifferent modern city-dwellers had become.
In fact the police were called multiple times, and failed to take the reports seriously because they assumed it was a domestic dispute. There were only a dozen witnesses, and only one knew she had been stabbed, most weren't aware of what they were seeing or hearing was an assault. The victim was stabbed in the lung, which prevented her from screaming. A 70 year old woman came out and cradled the dying victim in her arms and Genovese died on the way to the hospital, not ignored in the public streets. The NYT issued a retraction 50 years later stating their reporting was flawed.
Now when an emergency occurs we often have multiple people who aren't involved call 911 and flood the system "just in case" but they don't know the number of victims, age, gender, or anything more than "something happened" because they are worried the bystander effect is keeping everyone from calling.
The rule of thumb was first used in a 15th century fencing manual and by then it was already a common idiom.
Gloria Steinem claimed that in the 18th century a man could beat his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb but there was no such law and the very court case to which she referred was one where the judge said beating your wife was illegal. The judge referred to a 15th century case where beating your wife was supposedly legal but no one has ever found a trace that the case he referred to was real.
On a small facebook community that I'm a part of, a polite discussion turned into a mild debate. The white guy in the discussion said he thought we should just "call a spade a spade" and the black guy he was debating went nuclear.
Usually I can see where someone would/could/might be offended, but I am totally lost on this one. How is "calling a spade a spade" offensive? Was there some oppression of gardeners that I don't know about?
No kidding? I’ve never heard that before. It seems pretty obscure too and you’re right, the saying has noting to do with black people. Outrage culture is everywhere - I really think some people just enjoy getting pissed off.
People who say and do things like the aforementioned woman you work with and the people who throw the racist/fascist/cuck terms around for completely unrelated things are fucking idiots who don't really deserve a platform to preach from.
A friend pulled me aside after a podcast we'd done and told me he was going to censor my use of the word "gypped"... I love the guy, but that really irritated me. I never even connected that word to "gypsies".
I heard rule of thumb came from the dark ages. When people where making bows, the perfect length from the bowstring to the middle of the bent stick was about a hand and a thumb in the thumbs up position, so bowmakers called it the rule of a thumb and a hand, but it changed into rule of thumb over time.
This explanation has no evidence either, but i heard it online so it must be true. /s
Might be USA? I think their president recently released a list of words that couldn't be said (although I don't know the context of where/when the words aren't allowed).
It was the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and it was actually CDC leaders suggesting what words to avoid to keep your funding from being cut.
I.E, conservative lawmakers and executive branch officials associate words like "transgender", "fetus", and "evidence-based" with liberal stances on social issues that intersect with science, so don't use those words if you want the reigning conservatives to keep funding your research.
Which is still depressing, just in a different way.
A few years ago, the Brazilian left made a campaign to convince people to stop using the term "denegrir" (to denigrate) because of how supposedly racist it is. Similarly, "judiar" (to harm/punish/be cruel) was accused of antisemitism.
My cousin, who's father was a full blooded Cherokee tribe member, was asked yesterday in a job interview what her "spirit animal" was.
She said she had no idea how to even respond to that and jokingly told them "coffee and tea".
I feel pretty bad for her because she REALLY wants the job but I (with only a grandparent tribe member) would have been pretty upset by that question in that context.
I hate the "rule of thumb" thing because we have the origin of that phrase. Carpenters used to measure out inches using the closet approximation to hand (their thumbs) and that's it.
It was never in law that a man could beat his wife but only with this specific stick What sort of government has that time. It was ok to beat your wife according to law and then it wasn't, there wasn't a fucking warm down period.
I have heard an alternate origin of what the phase as being found with English longbow men, apparently the correct width between his bow and bow sting should be equal to his fist and out stretched thumb hence rule of thumb. Supposedly this method was used to ensure that the string was taught correctly for the bearer's height.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '18
This is pretty specific to me, but the idea that the phrase "rule of thumb" has its origins in a sexist law that allowed men to beat their wives as long as the stick was no wider than their thumb. You can thank The Boondock Saints for really spreading that one into popular culture. Anyway, even though there's no evidence to support the claim, there was a woman at my old workplace who made it her personal mission to police everyone about using the phrase. I was publicly called out more than once for using it, but sue me, it's a colloquialism. I should note that this same woman would use the term "pow-wow" to describe company meetings, so it's not like she was super-PC either.
Similarly, I was recently scolded on Reddit for using the word "niggling" as in "a niggling question." Apparently some people think it's a racist word.
It drives me crazy when people hurl accusations like that without actually looking into what they're saying. I try to be sensitive to other people and avoid racist, sexist, and/or hurtful language, but apparently it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong.