werewolf

8 October 2021

Woodcut, c. 1685. Three men, armed with clubs and a pitchfork, drive a wolf into well. On the left, of the scene the wolf, dressed in human clothing, is hung. In the background are the villages of Neuses and Eschenbach. The German caption reads: “Great Incident! With an outlawed wolf, who in 1685 in the Margraviate of Ansbach carried away and ate a number of children, was finally caught in a well on 9 October at Neuses near Eschenbach, and later hung.”

As most people know, a werewolf is a fictional monster, a person who changes into a wolf. In the most common English-language form of the legend, this transformation takes place at the full moon. Werewolf is a word with a very straightforward etymology, but with some interesting side notes. It is a compound of the Old English words wer (man) + wulf (wolf). So, a werewolf is literally a man-wolf. (Cf. man / woman / wife.)

But the word appears either only once or three times in the extant Old English corpus, depending on how you count it. The three passages in which it appears are by the same writer, repeated three times with slightly different wording/scribal variations. The writer is, coincidentally, Wulfstan (literally “wolf-stone”), the archbishop of York. In his writing, Wulfstan liked to play with the word wulf, and he doesn’t use werewolf in the sense we’re familiar with today. He uses it as a metaphor for Satan, a “wolf” that preys on humans. The passage as it appears in the first law code of Cnut (c.1020) reads as follows:

Þonne moton þa hyrdas beon swyðe wacore & geornlice clypigende, þe wið þone þeodsceaðan folce sceolan scyldan: þæt syndan bisceopas & mæssepreostas, þe godcunde heorda bewarian & bewerian sceolan mid wislican laran, þæt se wod freca werewulf to swyðe ne slite, ne to fela ne abite of godcunde heorde.

(Thus, the shepherds, who must protect the people against this ravager of the people must be very vigilant and zealously cry out: these are the bishops and priests who must defend and protect the divine flock with wise teaching, so that the mad, gluttonous werewolf does not rend nor bite too many of the divine flock.)

The Consiliatio Cnuti, a twelfth-century translation of Cnut’s law code into Latin, uses the word virlupus (literally man-wolf), which is a nonce calque of the English.

Given that Wulfstan’s uses of the word are in a different sense than that of the legendary monster, and that they are isolated by several centuries from the next uses of the word, later uses of the word to mean a lycanthrope may represent an independent coinage. When werewolf reappears in the late twelfth century, wer was still in common use and could produce compounds.

Werewolf stories became extremely popular in England at that time. The most famous is probably Marie de France’s lai of Bisclavret, written in the late twelfth / early thirteenth century. Marie wrote in Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken by the English nobility at the time. Bisclavret opens with the lines:

Quant de lais faire m’entrement,
Ne voil ublier Bisclaveret.
Bisclaveret ad nun en bretan,
Garwaf l’apelent li Norman.

(Since I have undertaken to compose lais,
I don’t want to forget Bisclavret.
Bisclavret is the name in Breton;
the Normans call it Garwaf.

Garwaf and its variant spellings, which are found elsewhere in the lai, do not appear in Anglo-Norman other than in this text. Garwaf appears to be an Anglo-French speaker’s pronunciation of the English werewolf.

But while garwaf or variations thereof do not appear in French, there is one instance in Latin that refers to the French word. In c.1212, around the same time Marie de France was writing, Gervase of Tilbury, an Englishman, wrote Otia Imperialia (Recreation for the Emperor) for the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV. It is a book of marvels and includes the following passage:

Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia, per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulfos Galli nominant, Angli vero Werewlf, dicunt. Were enim Anglice virum sonat, Wlf lupum.

(For we have often seen in England that men are changed into wolves by the phases of the moon, that type of men the French name gerulfos, the English, in truth, call werewolf. For in English were expresses virum, wolf lupum.)

This is the only known appearance of gerulfus in a Latin text, and would seem to be another instance of garwaf, this time by an Englishman Latinizing the Anglo-Norman word with its Francophone pronunciation of the English werewolf. Normally we speak of English borrowing words from Anglo-Norman, but werewolf is a case of the transfer going in the other direction.

One last note, in medieval usage werewolf could also mean a man-eating wolf. We see that use in The Master of Game, a book about hunting written c.1410 and found in several manuscripts, the preferred one being London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.12:

Ther ben some that eten children or men and ete noon oþere flessh fro þe tyme þat þei be acherned with mennys flessh, for rather þei wolde be dede, and þei ben cleped werwolfes for men shuld be “ware” of hem.

(There are some that eat children or men and eat no other flesh after the time when they are blooded with men’s flesh, for they would rather be dead, and they are called werewolves because men should be “wary” of them.)

From this passage, it would seem that by the early fifteenth century the first element in the compound, wer, was no longer understood, and the false etymology of a wolf to be wary of had developed. It seems the practice of making up plausible sounding folk etymologies is not just a modern one.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. werewolf, n.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. garulf.

Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, 2009.

Gervase of Tilbury. “Otia Imperialia.” In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Scriptores rerum Bunsvicensium. Hannover: Förster, 1707, 895. Google Books.

Libermann, Felix. Die Gesetze Der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903. 1 Cnut § 26.3 (c.1020), 306–307. London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.1, fols. 3r–41r.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. wer-wolf, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. werewolf, n.

Waters, Claire M. “Bisclavret.” The Lais of Marie de France. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2018, 144–45. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wulfstan. Old English Legal Writings: Wulfstan. Andrew Rabin, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 66. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2020, 252–53.

Image credit: Unknown artist, c.1685. Public domain image.

salad / salad days

7 October 2021

A recipe for salad set down by the chief cook for King Richard II of England, c.1390. The recipe, transcribed below, follows the rubricated word Salat.

Salads actually take their name from the dressing, not the primary components. Salad comes from the Old French salade, whose root is from the Latin sal, or salt—the name is from the seasonings applied to the primary ingredients.

Salad makes its English debut toward the end of the fourteenth century. The oldest known recipe for a salad is one used by c.1390 by the master cook of Richard II of England, found in a collection of medieval recipes with the title The Forme of Cury. The manuscript in which it’s found dates to c.1425:

Salat.
Take persel, sawge, garlec, chibolles, onyouns, leek, borage, myntes, porrettes, fenel and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye, laue, and waische hem clene, pike hem, pluk hem small wiþ þyn honde and myng hem well with rawe oile. Lay on vyneger and salt. And serue it forth.

(Salad. Take parsley, sage, garlic, scallions, onions, leek, borage mints, young leeks, fennel, and garden cresses, rue, rosemary, pusrlane, lave and wash them clean, pick them, pluck them into small pieces with your hand, and mix them well with raw oil. Lay on vinegar and salt. And serve it forth.)

The phrase salad days is a play on the metaphor of green symbolizing young plant growth, and the phrase originally meant youth and naivete. The origin of this one is quite straightforward. It’s from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 5, in which Cleopatra chalks up her past statements of love for Julius Caesar as indiscretions of her youth, or salad days:

Alex. I, Madam, twenty seuerall Messengers.
Why do you send so thicke?

Cleo. Who’s borne that day, when I forget to send to Anthonie, shall dye a begger. Inke and paper Charmian. Welcome my good Alexas. Did I Charmian, euer loue Cæsar so?

Char. O that braue Cæsar!

Cleo. Be choak’d with such another Emphasis,
Say the braue Anthony.

Char. The valiant Cæsar.

Cleo. By Isis, I will giue thee bloody teeth,
If thou with Cæsar Parago nagaine [sic]:
My man of men.

Char. By your most gracious pardon,
I sing but after you.

Cleo. My sallad dayes,
When I was greene in iudgment, cold in blood,
To say, as I saide then. But come, away,
Get me Inke and Paper,
he shall haue euery day a seuerall greeting, or Ile vnpeople Egypt.

Parago nagaine is a printing error in the First Folio. The line should read Paragon againe.

But in recent decades, the phrase has shifted in meaning, referring instead to a period when a person was in their prime, at the peak of their abilities. For instance, the following headline appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 2 March 1970 over an article about how recruitment for the US Army Reserve was past its peak:

Salad Days Over for Army’s Reserve
Draft Lottery, Manpower Cuts Shrink Waiting Lists

Salad days being over, we’ve all been there.

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Sources:

The Forme of Cury. London: J. Nichols, 1780, 41–42. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Add. MS 5016, fol. 6r.

Freeman, Jan. “Salad Says Aren’t What They Used to Be.” Boston Globe, 15 April 2001, third edition, D5. ProQuest.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. salade, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. salad, n.

Rawitch, Robert. “Salad Days Over for Army’s Reserve.” Los Angeles Times, 2 March 1970, B1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra, 1.5. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (First Folio, Brandeis University). London: Isaac Jaggrd and Edward Blount, 1623, 344–45.

Image credit: London, British Library, Add. MS 5016, fol. 6r. Public domain image as a brief section of a mechanical reproduction of a work in the public domain.

sabotage

An Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) stickerette or “silent agitator” from 1915. A drawing of a wooden shoe crushing a top-hatted capitalist, coins spilling out of his pockets. In the background are silhouettes of industrial buildings. The IWW logo is above, shining like the sun. The caption is quotation from IWW official W.D. Haywood, “Sabotage means to push back, pull out or break off the fangs of Capitalism.”

6 October 2021

Sabotage, as one might guess from the word’s ending, is a borrowing from French, and that borrowing occurred in the opening years of the twentieth century. The root, sabot, literally means a wooden shoe or clog. The route from shoe to malicious damage is not clear on its face and has spawned at least one myth regarding the origin of the latter meaning, but when one looks at the use of the word in French, how it came to mean malicious damage becomes clear.

In addition to the sense of a shoe, the French word became associated with shoddy workmanship, with bungling on the job. Here’s a series of entries from a 1906 French-English dictionary:

sabot sa´bo m. sabot, wooden shoe; horse’s hoof; clog, turban-shell; socket (of furniture); child’s top; wretched fiddle; (of ships) old tub; dormir comme un sabot, sleep like a top.

sabotage sabɔ´ta:ʒ m. manufacture of wooden shoes.

saboter sabɔ´te intr. spin a top; clatter with one’s shoes; turn out poor work. — tr. bungle, make a botch of.

saboteur sabɔ´tə:r m. bungler.

The association with bungling comes from the fact that sabots were primarily worn by agricultural workers and may stem from the idea that when such workers came to the city and manufacturing jobs, they were unskilled and tended to produce shoddy products. Alternatively, it could come from the more straightforward, but still stereotypical, association with rural yokels being foolish and inept.

In the hands of the burgeoning labor movement of the era, however, sabotage, meaning a bungled job, took on a more deliberate connotation. Workers would deliberately bungle as form of labor protest. The word first appears in English in this sense in labor and socialist publications. The following, which appears in the Daily People of 15 July 1906, describes the tactics of the French labor unionists:

No useless riots in the streets; the old romantic Blanquist tactics are forgotten, but the use of what they name “action direct” (direct action), which I will try to describe as follows:

First—In case of strike—use violent picketing, knock down scabs, and go as far as burning down the shop. (In Fresseneville they burnt down the shop and the house of the boass, who had a narrow escape in an automobile). If the scabs, when going to work, are protected by soldiers, they did not bother about picketing, and went to the houses of the scabs and “saw” them there.

Second—In case of work—use “sabotage”: I try to translate that word as “go-canny.” For instance, bakery workers threatened to put ovens out of use by pouring petroleum on the dead-plate. This (does not poison the bread, but it makes bread ill-smelling). Ways of using “sabotage” are countless: when properly used, they will be terrible and deadly weapons.

There are two things of note here. First, the word has not yet been Anglicized; it appears in quotation marks, a definition is given, and it is being used in the context of France. Second, sabotage is not being used in the current sense of malicious damage—that would be the actions described in the first case. Rather, it is being used in the sense of sly and inventive means to produce shoddy products.

But within a few years sabotage would become fully Anglicized and integrated into English. The Coal Trade Bulletin of September 1914, for example, uses both sabotage and direct action, seen and defined in the above quotation, as English words without need of explanation. The WF of M is the Western Federation of Miners, and the IWW is the Industrial Workers of the World, a.k.a. the Wobblies, a more radical, general union that favored direct action:

All because a large number of misguided dupes listened and were led astray by the ideas of a few impossibilists who wanted nothing else than the opportunity of ruling the W.F. of M. and then turning them over to that aggregation of self-appointed labor saviors who preach direct action (except where it’s on syndicalism), sabotage, etc., the I.W.W.

And the verb to sabotage is recorded a few years later. Here it is in an article from the Nottingham Evening Post of 15 August 1918 about the impending collapse of Germany in the closing days of WWI. It is also being used in a more general, metaphorical sense, rather than the specific sense of destruction of property:

The newspaper mentioned [i.e., the National Zeitung (Berne)] understands that the German disaster has unpleasantly surprised official Austrian circles and caused consternation among the population. “The Austrian social organisation is bankrupt, and the war is being sabotaged,” adds this newspaper.

The aforementioned myth is that sabotage comes from protesting workers throwing their wooden shoes into machinery, thereby damaging the equipment and halting production. The myth is an old one, but got a boost in 1991 when it was repeated in the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But tossing shoes in the gears, as we have seen, is not the phrase’s origin. The actual origin, at least in my opinion, is one of the many cases where the real origin is more interesting than the mythical one.

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Sources:

“The Coming Collapse of Germany.” Nottingham Evening Post (England), 15 August 1918, 1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Bruckere, A. “The French Labor Movement.” Daily People (New York), 15 July 1906, 4. Readex: America’s Historic Newspapers.

International French-English and English-French Dictionary. New York: Hinds, Hayden and Eldridge, 1906, 541. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Online Etymology Dictionary, 2021, s.v. sabotage, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sabotage, n., sabot, n.

“United Mine Workers’ Delegates Report on Convention of Western Federation of Miners.” Coal Trade Bulletin, 31.7, 1 September 1914, 24. Gale Primary Sources: Archives Unbound.

Image credit: Unknown artist. Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), 1915. Public domain image.

sabbatical

5 October 2021

Sabbath is from the Latin sabbatum, which in turn comes via Greek from the Hebrew שַׁבָּת (sabbat), from a root meaning ceasing to work, rest. According to Genesis 2:2–3, after creating the universe in six days, God rested on the seventh. In Exodus 10:8–11, the Ten Commandments order the seventh day of the week to be one of rest. Furthermore, Leviticus 25:1–7 commands that every seventh year be a sabbatical year, in which fields are to lie fallow and most agricultural activity must cease. The weekly sabbath has been scrupulously observed by Jews over the centuries, but the rule on sabbatical years seems to have been inconsistently enforced over the centuries.

While the word sabbath can be found in Old English, the English adjective sabbatical appears much later than one might expect, in the late sixteenth century. In his 1599 A New Treatise of the Right Reckoning of Yeares, Robert Pont refers to the sabbatical years:

That this yeare of Christ, 1600. by right reckoning, is neither a Sabbaticall yeare, nor yet a yeare of Iubilee: and that the true Iubilee of Christianes is alreadie accomplished: with detection of the abuse of the counterfaited Iubilees holden at Rome.

And we see the adjective applied in relation to the weekly observance in Joseph Beaumont’s 1648 poem Psyche: or Loves Mysterie:

Thus the Sabbatick Fount, which all the Week
Keeps close at home, and lets no Drop spurt out;
Exactly watches and attends the Break
Of the seav'nth Day; and then, as quick as thought
     Poures out its Flood, and sacrifices all
     Its Plenty to that holy Festivall.

Starting in the nineteenth century, sabbatical began to be applied in an expanded sense, referring to a year of research and reflection after six years of work. It was first used this way among the clergy, where ministers would get a year free of pastoral duties in order to study and prepare for the next six years of preaching. We see evidence of this practice as early as 1828 in a letter written by Edward Irving, a Scottish minister:

Next Sabbath is the first of my Sabbatical year. God grant it may be a year of free-will fruitfulness!

Later in the century, universities began adopting a sabbatical system for their faculty, whereby professors would be granted one year off in seven in order to conduct research free of teaching or administrative duties. Harvard University was the first, at least in North America, to implement a sabbatical system for leaves of absence, although it did not use the term sabbatical at the outset. Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, wrote in his annual report dated 7 January 1881:

For some years previous to 1869, the practice had been to grant occasional leave of absence, the professor selecting and paying his substitute, but receiving his usual salary. This practice have given rise to serious complaints, and being obviously open to grave objections, the Corporation went to the opposite extreme, and enacted that whenever a professor had leave of absence his salary should stop altogether. Being now satisfied that a more liberal policy will be as much for the interest of the University as for the advantage of the professors, the Corporation have decided that they will grant occasional leave of absence for one year on half-pay, provided that no professor have such leave oftener than once in seven years; that the applications in any one year be reasonable in number, and properly distributed among the different departments; and that the object of the professor in asking leave of absence be health, rest, study, or the prosecution of original work in literature or science.

Cornell University and Wellesley College followed suit in 1886, implementing similar systems. The earliest use of sabbatical in reference to such a system regards Wellesley’s in 1886:

THE SABBATICAL GRANT, adopted by Harvard College, provides that the professors and assistant professors of the permanent staff of instructors may once in seven years be relieved from academic duty for the period of one year, with their half-salaries continued to them. This gives them opportunity to rest or travel or engage in congenial occupation at home. The result is not wholly satisfactory.

Since then, the time period has become variable, if sabbaticals are granted at all. And some private corporations grant employees sabbatical leave at reduced or no pay from time to time.

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Sources:

Beaumont, Joseph. Psyche: or Loves Mysterie. London: John Dawson, 1648, 10.320, 179. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Eels, Walter Crosby. “The Origin and Early History of Sabbatical Leave.” AAUP Bulletin, 48.3, September 1962, 253–56.

Eliot, Charles W. “President’s Report for 1879–80,” 7 January 1881. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College. 1879–80. Cambridge: UP, John Wilson and Son, 1880, 19–20. Harvard & Radcliffe Annual Reports. [Note the report is signed as of 7 January 1881, but the publication date is given as 1880.]

Irving, Edward. Letter, 19 July 1828. In Oliphant, Margaret. The Life of Edward Irving, vol. 2 of 2. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862, 35. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sabbatical, adj. and n., sabbatic, adj. and n., sabbath, n.

Pont, Robert. A New Treatise of the Right Reckoning of Yeares. Edinburgh: Robert Walde-Grave, 1599, 2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

 “System of Pensions.” Library Festival at Wellesley College. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1886, 23. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

rule of thumb

A hand-colored etching by James Gillray, 1782, titled, Judge Thumb, or__Patent Sticks for Family Correction: Warranted Lawful! Francis Buller, in a judge’s robe and wig, walks left to right, carrying two bundles of sticks that he is trying to sell. He says, “Who wants a cure for a rusty Wife? Here’s your nice Family Amusement for Winter Evenings! Who buys here?” In the background a man is beating his wife with a stick. She is saying, “Help! Murder for God’s sake, Murder!” Her husband replies, “Murder, hay? it’s Law you Bitch! its not bigger than my Thumb!”

4 October 2021

A rule of thumb is any method of estimation or practice that is based on practical experience and that will work sufficiently well in a majority of, but by no means all, cases. There is a widespread belief that the phrase rule of thumb has its origins in an old legal doctrine that says a husband has the right to beat his wife so long as the weapon used is no thicker than a person’s thumb. Such a belief, to use the coinage of Henry Ansgar Kelly, is folklaw. But it is folklaw with a kernel of truth within it, and dividing the truth from fiction in this case must be carefully done.

First, the phrase rule of thumb does not have its origins in any such legal doctrine, real or imagined.

Second, there was an old legal doctrine that a husband could beat his wife, so long as the beating was not too severe. But this doctrine was repudiated much earlier than many people think, by the seventeenth century in England, and for the most part the doctrine was never recognized in the United States.

Third, there never was any legal doctrine regarding the size of the weapon used in such a beating, but on rare occasion some judges did refer to such a supposed doctrine in their judicial opinions.

Fourth, and most importantly, spousal abuse was and remains a significant problem, and the courts and law enforcement have all too often looked the other way when men have beaten their wives. The fact that no such folklaw doctrine has ever actually existed in no way diminishes this reality, and it should not be used to downplay the problem of spousal abuse.

Let’s take on the origin of the phrase first and then discuss the history of the supposed legal doctrine.

The word thumb itself, the word for the thick, inner digit of the human hand, comes from the Old English þuma, which in turn is from a common Proto-Germanic root. The use of thumbs as a unit of measure stems from the fact that the distance between the tip of a person’s thumb and the first knuckle is more or less one inch in length, and the thumb can, therefore, be used to give a rough estimate of an object’s length. Use of the thumb as a unit of measure dates to at least to the turn of the fifteenth century, when, in setting out standards of measurement, the statutes of Robert III of Scotland (reigned 1390–1406) included the following law, which uses the Latin pollex (thumb) as a name for a unit of measure:

Pollices mensuratos cum Pollicibus trium hominum, cum videlicet ex magno, mediocri et parvo, et secundum mediocrem Pollicem debet stare, aut secundum longitudinem trium granorum hordei sine caudis.

(Thumbs are to be measured by the thumbs of three men, namely one large, one medium, and one small, and should stand in accordance with the medium thumb, or in accordance with the length of three grains of barley without tails.)

English language mention of a thumb as a unit of measure appeared in Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary:

Poulcée: f. an inch, or inch-measure; the breadth of a thumbe.

And thumb appears as a synonym for inch in Gerard Maynes 1622 guide to mercantile customs, Consuetudo, vel Lex mercatoria, or The Ancient Law-Merchant:

A Thumbe or Inch is 6 Graines or Barley cornes, making two of them three.

The phrase rule of thumb is an extension of this use in measurement and appears to have originated in Scotland, as all of the earliest citations of its use are by Scottish writers, and one early use claims the phrase is part of an old Scottish proverb.

The earliest known use of the phrase rule of thumb is in a theological tract by James Durham. The date is uncertain, but it must have been written before his death in 1658. The metaphor is clearly one of measurement:

It is to be feared, that many others are but building castles in the air, castles of come down when the rain shall descend, the winds blow, and the floods beat, having much more shew then substance, and solid work; and the way to make it sicker, sure and solid work, that will abide the tryal, is to lay it to the Rule, and to try it thereby; many profest Christians are like to foolish builders, who build by guess, and by rule of thumb, (as we use to speak) and not by Square and Rule

In 1680, John Alexander wrote this in an anti-Quaker tract:

For first, That must be the Rule of Faith and Manners by which every matter of Faith and Manners ought to be examin'd seeing every thing that is examined must be examined by its Rule, or else it will be done by Guess and Rule of Thumb, as the Jest is. But every matter of Faith and Manners ought to be examined by the Scriptures

William Hope, another Scotsman, used it in his 1691 The Compleat Fencing-Master:

The Judging of Distance exactly is one of the hardest things to be acquired in all the Art of the smal-Sword; and when once it is acquired it is one of the usefulest things, and sheweth a Mans Art as much as any Lesson in it; but I am for no Mans Retiring too much, unless upon a very good Design, and that hardly any Ignorant of this Art can have, because what he doth (as the common Proverb is) he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art.

And James Kelly recorded the following Scottish proverb “explained and made intelligible to the English reader” in a 1721 collection of such aphorisms:

No Rule so good as Rule of Thumb, if it hit.
But it seldom hits! Spoken when a Thing falls out to be right which we did at a Venture.

In addition to all of these early uses being Scottish, they all used rule of thumb as a metaphor for measuring length, and all highlighted its uses as being inaccurate and, in the case of swordplay at least, potentially fatal.

As to the veracity of the claims about the law, it is indeed the case English common law did once allow a husband to hit his wife, so long as the beating wasn’t too severe. But there was never any rule about thumb-sized sticks. William Blackstone, in his 1766 Commentaries on the Laws of England refers to this legal doctrine, but says it was abandoned by the reign of Charles II (1660–85), although many of the common folk believed it still to be valid law:

The husband also (by the old law) might give his wife moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehaviour, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his servants or children; for whom the master or parent is also liable in some cases to answer. But this power of correction was confined within reasonable bounds; and the husband was prohibited to use any violence to his wife, aliter quam ad virum [i.e., differently than to a man], ex causa regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae [for the sake of the government and chastisement of his wife], licite et rationabiliter pertinet [as is legally and rationally suitable]. The civil law gave the husband the same, or a larger, authority over his wife; allowing him, for some misdemeanors, flagellis et fustibus acriter verberare uxorem [to beat his wife vigorously with whips and sticks]; for others, only modicam castigationem adhibere [to employ moderate punishment]. But, with us, in the politer reign of Charles the second, this power of correction began to be doubted, and a wife may now have security of the peace against her husband; or, in return, a husband against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were always fond of the old common law, still claim and exert their antient privilege, and the courts of law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty, in the case of any gross misbehavior.

Note that Blackstone makes no mention of thumbs or even the size of any such whips and sticks. And note that Blackstone acknowledges that spousal abuse is not always the case of a husband beating the wife. Sometimes the husband is the victim.

An anonymous c.1782 etching of Francis Buller, in judge’s wig and robe, beating his wife with a stick, while a cat and barking dog watch. Buller says, “Tis no bigger than my Thumb,” to which she replies, “Would I had known of this before Marriage.” A partially unrolled scroll reads, “A Husband may Chastize his Wife with a Stick the Size of his thumb. Coke.” (No such statement by Elizabethan/Jacobean jurist Edward Coke has been recorded, and the statement was probably invented by the cartoonist.)

The origin of the stick-no-bigger-than-a-thumb folklaw would seem to be a 1782 incident, or at least that’s the earliest such connection between thumbs and weapons of spousal assault that has been found. The incident involved Francis Buller, a judge on the king’s bench who allegedly stated that it was lawful for a husband to beat his wife with stick so long as it was no bigger than his thumb. No record of Buller saying any such thing has been found, but it was widely attributed to him at the time and earned him the sobriquet of Judge Thumb. The lack of a written record indicates, that if he said such a thing, it may have been a personal opinion and not any kind of judicial ruling.

Important in understanding this incident is that public opinion at the time was solidly against Buller’s statement, and he was roundly excoriated for it. Spousal abuse in eighteenth-century England, while then all too common as it unfortunately still is today, was uniformly seen as wrong, at least by the press and those that had a public voice. Two satirical cartoons about Buller and his unfortunate statement were published that year, both pictured here. One is by James Gillray, titled Judge Thumb, or__Patent Sticks for Family Correction: Warranted Lawful! and published on 27 November 1782. The second is anonymous, titled Mr. Justice Thumb in the Act of Flagellation and is of uncertain date. The copy in the British Museum bears two dates, one says “Rambl. Mag. Jan. 1783” and the other 27 November 1782. Complicating matters, the British Museum’s description of the article gives a date of 1 February 1782. I have been unable to locate the Rambler Magazine in question.

Nor was the incident quickly forgotten. A poem submitted to the Wit’s Magazine of October 1784 reads:

Yet still, if to wed proves at last my sad lot,
     Thro’ Fate’s never-failing decree;
I’ll endeavour to tie up the conjugal knot,
     With a girl who’s good-temper’d and free.

But should she, by brawling, embitter my life
     Judge Thumb gives the law on my side;
Who says, if a man has a termagant wife,
     With a CANE he may liquor her hide.

And a song titled The Prophets appears in a 1790 collection of popular tunes:

Then Moses sung first as a president should,
And laid down the law as at time it stood;
He quoted his thumb-book, and swore with
     a nod,                                     [with a rod.
That the ladies should soon flog Judge Thumb
                                                   Derry down.

It is this alleged statement by Buller that first promulgated the folklaw. The folklaw has been mentioned in a handful of subsequent legal decisions, all American. In only one decision did a court recognize the folklaw as valid, but that was reversed on appeal. But while the idea that a man could whip his wife with a thumb-sized cane or switch was almost always rejected by American courts, these nineteenth-century decisions are hardly great victories for the rights of women.

The first is a Mississippi case from 1824, Bradley vs. State, in which the judge opined:

It is true, according to the old law, the husband might give his wife moderate correction, because he is answerable for her misbehaviour; hence it was thought reasonable, to intr[u]st him, with a power, necessary to restrain the indiscretions of one, for whose conduct he was to be made responsible. [...] Sir William Blackstone says, during the reign of Charles the first, this power was much doubted.—Notwithstanding the lower orders of people still claimed and exercised it as an inherent privilege, which could not be abandoned, without entrenching upon their rightful authority, known and acknowledged from the earliest periods of the common law, down to the present day. I believe it was in a case before Mr. Justice Raymond, when the same doctrine was recognised, with proper limitations and restrictions, well suited to the condition and feelings of those, who might think proper to use a whip or rattan, no bigger than my thumb, in order to inforce the salutary restraints of domestic discipline.

While the judge declared the husband’s actions to be “deplorable,” he ruled that the courts should not interfere in cases of “moderate chastisement,” such matters being better dealt with by the family. The “Justice Raymond” the Mississippi judge referred to is probably Lord Robert Raymond, a British judge who served from 1724-33. But no one has been able to find a ruling by Raymond on spousal abuse. The Mississippi judge probably confused Raymond with Buller.

A pair of cases from North Carolina occur later in the nineteenth century. In the 1868 matter of State v. Rhodes, a state trial court had found:

that the defendant struck Elizabeth Rhodes, his wife, three licks, with a switch about the size of one of his fingers (but not as large as a man's thumb) without any provocation except some words uttered by her and not recollected by the witness.

But because the switch was smaller than a man’s thumb, the court acquitted the husband. On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court argued:

Two boys under fourteen years of age fight upon the play-ground, and yet the courts will take no notice of it, not for the reason that boys have the right to fight, but because the interests of society require that they should be left to the more appropriate discipline of the school room and of home. It is not true that boys have a right to fight; nor is it true that a husband has a right to whip his wife. And if he had, it is not easily seen how the thumb is the standard of size for the instrument which he may use, as some of the old authorities have said; and in deference to which was his Honor's charge. A light blow, or many light blows, with a stick larger than the thumb, might produce no injury; but a switch half the size might be so used as to produce death. The standard is the effect produced, and not the manner of producing it, or the instrument used.

And the state supreme court ruled that while a husband beating his wife in any manner was illegal, courts should take no notice:

unless some permanent injury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence, or such a degree of cruelty as shows that it is inflicted to gratify his own bad passions.

So, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the lower court had erred in finding the man not guilty because of the size of the switch, but said he was still not guilty because no permanent injury was inflicted. But in so doing, the court also acknowledged that it was out of step with contemporary legal opinion, as laws in other states and prevailing legal thought would disagree with its decision:

Because our opinion is not in unison with the decisions of some of the sister States, or with the philosophy of some very respectable law writers, and could not be in unison with all, because of their contrariety— decent respect for the opinions of others has induced us to be very full in stating the reasons for our conclusion.

This 1868 decision was subsequently overturned as “obsolete or repugnant to the freedom and independence of this state and our form of government” and is no longer a valid decision under North Carolina law.

A few years later, in the 1874 case of State v. Oliver, the North Carolina Supreme Court reaffirmed its earlier ruling, while upholding the conviction of a man because his beating his wife, while inflicting no permanent injury, was done out of “malice and cruelty”:

We may assume that the old doctrine, that a husband had a right to whip his wife, provided he used a switch no larger than his thumb, is not law in North Carolina. Indeed, the Courts have advanced from that barbarism until they have reached the position, that the husband has no right to chastise his wife, under any circumstances.

But from motives of public policy,--in order to preserve the sanctity of the domestic circle, the Courts will not listen to trivial complaints.

If no permanent injury has been inflicted, nor malice, cruelty nor dangerous violence shown by the husband, it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze, and leave the parties to forget and forgive.

No general rule can be applied, but each case must depend upon the circumstances surrounding it.

In the 1871 case of Fulgham v. The State, Alabama did better than these other states. It ruled that any instance of a person hitting their spouse, other than in self-defense, is a crime. In the case, the husband was convicted of striking his wife after she rebuked him. The trial court rejected the defendant’s argument that moderate chastisement was permissible and specifically said the prior rulings in Mississippi and North Carolina were not the law in Alabama. On appeal, the state supreme court affirmed the lower court’s ruling, letting the conviction stand. In its ruling, the state supreme court didn’t mention thumbs, but it did refer to “rod which may be drawn through a wedding ring” as not being a valid standard:

Since [Blackstone’s time], however, learning, with its humanizing influences, has made great progress, and morals and religion have made some progress with it. Therefore, a rod which may be drawn through the wedding ring is not now deemed necessary to teach the wife her duty and subjection to the husband. The husband is therefore not justified or allowed by law to use such a weapon, or any other, for her moderate correction.

In its conclusion, the Alabama Supreme Court called spousal abuse, “a low and barbarous custom, and never was a law.”

So, to sum up the jurisprudence on the question of beating one’s wife with a weapon smaller than a man’s thumb, what we have is that standard was never valid in England, and the idea that a husband could use moderate corporal punishment on his wife has been rejected since at least the seventeenth century. One eighteenth-century English judge, i.e., Buller, probably made some sort of statement to the effect that it was permissible to do so, but he was roundly excoriated for saying it. In the United States, courts generally ruled that spousal abuse was wrong, but some opined that except in severe cases it was not a judicial matter. One lower court did rule that the thumb rule was valid, but it was overturned on appeal. And while a handful of states in the nineteenth century did rule that moderate corporal punishment was if not strictly legal, not a matter for the courts to adjudicate, these were the exception. None of these legal cases invoked the phrase rule of thumb.

The association of the phrase rule of thumb with the folklaw began in the 1970s. A pair of writings on spousal abuse seem to have made that connection. In 1976, feminist activist Del Martin wrote the following in her book Battered Wives, which has been misinterpreted by many:

In America, early settlers held European attitudes towards women. Our law, based upon the old English common-law doctrines, explicitly permitted wife-beating for correctional purposes. However, certain restrictions did exist, and the general trend in the young states was toward declaring wife-beating illegal. For instance, 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.

Martin’s summary of the common and case law is incorrect—although the fact that the legal establishment frequently ignored cases of spousal abuse certainly was the case—but her use of rule of thumb is not a claim that the phrase came out of the practice. Her use of “so to speak” indicates that she is saying that the any doctrine of moderate punishment was a sort of rough and ready rule to excuse behavior that should be inexcusable. But the passage can be and was misread.

A year after Martin’s book was published, Terry Davidson wrote the following:

One of the reasons nineteenth century British wives were dealt with so harshly by their husbands and by their legal system was the “rule of thumb.” Included in the British Common Law was a section regulating wifebeating. The law was created as an example of compassionate reform when it modified the weapons a husband could legally use in “chastising” his wife. The old law had authorized a husband to “chastise his wife with any reasonable instrument.” The new law stipulated that the reasonable instrument be only “a rod not thicker than his thumb.” In other words, wifebeating was legal.

As we have seen, other than the fact that spousal abuse was and is all too prevalent, nothing in this paragraph is correct. Elsewhere in the piece Davidson quotes Blackstone, but interprets Blackstone’s statement of the old practice as an endorsement.

Given the proximity of the dates of publication, it seems unlikely that Davidson was aware of Martin’s book when she wrote her article. But the two in tandem seem to have been enough to implant the false idea in the public’s consciousness.

To sum up: yes, spousal abuse is an evil and all too prevalent; no, the phrase rule of thumb does not have its origins in a legal justification for spousal abuse.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Alexander, John. Jesuitico-Quakerism Examined, or, a Confutation of the Blasphemous and Unreasonable Principles of the Quakers. London: Dorman Newman, 1680, 23. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1. Dublin: John Exshaw, et al., 1766, 432–33. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Bradley vs. State, Supreme Court of Mississippi, 1 December 1824, 1.Morr.St.Cas. 20, Walker 156, 1 Miss. 156, 1824 WL 631. Thomson Reuters: Westlaw.

Calvert, Robert. “Criminal and Civil Liability in Husband-Wife Assaults.” In Suzanne K. Steinmetz and Murray A. Straus, eds. Violence in the Family. New York: Dodd Mead, 1975, 88–91. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611, s.v. poulcée. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

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Martin, Del. Battered Wives (1976), revised, updated. San Francisco: Volcano Press, 1981, 31. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2011, modified September 2019, s.v. rule of thumb, n. and adj.

“The Prophets.” The Modern Syren, A Collection of the Most Celebrated New Songs. Newcastle: S. Hodgson, 1790. 180. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

State v. Oliver, Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1 January 1874, 70 N.C. 60, 1874 WL 2346. Thomson Reuters: Westlaw.

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Stone, W. “Select Answers to the Prize Enigma.” The Wit’s Magazine (October 1784), vol. 2. London: Harrison, 1785. 399. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Virmani v. Presbyterian Health Services Corp., Supreme Court of North Carolina, 25 June 1999, 350 N.C. 449, 515 S.E.2d 675, 27 Media L. Rep. 2537. Thomson Reuters: Westlaw.

Image credit: James Gillray, “Judge Thumb,” 27 November 1782. The British Museum. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a work that is in the public domain.