Rule of Thumb (how weird is this)?

Question

In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker then his thumb.

Hince the "rule of thumb"

Answer 1

Not true, Urban legend.


Origin of the Phrase

The earliest citation comes from Sir William Hope’s The Compleat Fencing-Master, second edition, 1692, page 157: "What he doth, he doth by rule of thumb, and not by art"
The notion that the "rule of thumb" was a law that limited the width of a rod that a man may use to beat his wife has been partially discredited. Wife beating has been explicitly illegal in British law since the 1700s, and has never been legally sanctioned in America. However, at least four judges and other legal authorities from 1782 to 1897 have referred to the bogus law in spite of the fact that it never existed. The non-law gained popularity after feminist Del Martin wrote in 1976:
Our law, based upon the old English common-law doctrines, explicitly permitted wife-beating for correctional purposes. However . . . the common-law doctrine had been modified to allow the husband 'the right to whip his wife, provided that he used a switch no bigger than his thumb'--a rule of thumb, so to speak.
It is now firmly entrenched as an urban myth.

Also:Meaning

To be caught in the act of committing a misdemeanour, with the evidence there for all to see.

Origin

The Red Hand has long been a heraldic and cultural symbol of the northern Irish province of Ulster. One of the many myths as to its origin is the tale of how, in a boat race in which the first to touch the shore of Ulster was to become the province's ruler, one contestant guaranteed his win by cutting off his hand and throwing it to the shore ahead of his rivals. The potency of the symbol remains and is used in the Ulster flag, and as recently as the 1970s a group of Ulster loyalist paramilitaries named themselves the Red Hand Commandos.

Red-handed doesn't have a mythical origin however - it is a straightforward allusion to having blood on one's hands after the execution of a murder or a poaching session. The term originates, not from Northern Ireland, but from a country not far from there, i.e. Scotland. An earlier form of 'red-handed', simply 'red hand', dates back to a usage in the Scottish Acts of Parliament of James I, 1432.

Answer 2

Yeah, one of my friend's told me that.
It's sort of sick how such sayings can become so commonplace that we forget the cruelty behind them.
Like the phrase being caught "red handed" is a reference to American Indians. Which is racist. And weird that I didn't know that until just a short while ago.
Makes you think about the other sayings we have though, right?

Answer 3

Considered an urban legend.

Answer 4

woah... im glad i dont live in that era! haha