Commentary, Opinion

Rule of thumb

July 17, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Several years ago, a person I worked with used the phrase ‘rule of thumb’ when referring to a project we were working on.

One of the women in the office, who was known to be offended by just about everything, became quite incensed at his wording.

‘Rule of thumb,’ she declared, was an old law in the UK that determined the thickness of a rod in which a husband could legally beat his wife. She referred to my co-worker as misogynistic and a few other choice words.

He had no idea what she was talking about.

I explained to the woman that the law she was referring to never existed, and someone just made it up a few years earlier. The phrase ‘rule of thumb’ was used in the same way as ‘feet’ were determined for a measurement, and ‘hands’ were used to measure the height of a horse. It never had anything to do with a man beating his wife.

She gave me a blank stare and stormed away – again offended because she was wrong and couldn’t think of another name to call someone.

There are plenty of old phrases or occurrences in history that never happened or have had their meaning or real history changed so much that they have no relation to the original event.

Prima Nocta was supposedly the right of a feudal lord during medieval times to have sexual relations with any female in his jurisdiction, particularly on her wedding night.

I was actually taught this by an English teacher in high school when we were studying a Shakespeare play.

However, it never happened, and there was no such law.

It occurred in Mel Gibson’s movie, “Braveheart,” when the Lord showed up and took a young bride away from her soon-to-be husband. However, ask any Scotsman what he thinks about Braveheart.

Braveheart was a fun movie to watch, a real epic, but it is also one of the most wildly historically inaccurate movies ever made. Most of the events in the movie never happened, and the kilt, as worn by every man in the film, had not yet been invented.

Even if Prima Nocta really existed, no feudal lord in his right mind would think of doing something like that to the peasants who lived on his land.

Showing up at a wedding with the intent of taking the bride away for an evening of his pleasure would have likely ended with a sword thrust into his chest or the local village rising up and burning his house to the ground with him in it.

There is a myth that diamonds are both rare and a good investment.

Diamonds are not rare. There are plenty of them.

The myth was started by the De Beers company, which at the time had a monopoly on the diamond industry and still controls a large share of the diamond production in the world.

They started one of the most successful advertising campaigns in the world and convinced people that diamonds are the proper stone for an engagement ring.

They also used the phrase, “It is said you should spend three months’ salary on an engagement ring.”

The implication in the advertisement was that if you didn’t spend that kind of money, you were cheap.

A lot of people bought into that idea. Many guys struggled to come up with that kind of money to buy a ring so their future wife and her family wouldn’t think he was too cheap to buy the real thing.

What De Beers didn’t tell you was that they, themselves, came up with the three-month rule.

That’s a clever way to get people to spend more money on your product – and it worked.

Diamonds are not an investment. I don’t know anyone who bought a diamond and later sold it for a profit.

The wild, wild west did not have a lot of gunfights on the streets. There are only two recorded movie-style gunfights.

One was the gunfight at the OK Coral between the Earps and the Clantons, and the other involved a showdown between Wild Bill Hickok and a local gambler. And that gunfight was more a duel than a gunfight.

Wild Bill was sober, stood sideways, carefully aimed his pistol and shot the man dead at 75 yards.

Many towns actually had an ordinance against firearms within town limits.  

Any gun play that took part was usually fuelled by alcohol, and the chance of a bystander being wounded or killed by a stray bullet fired by a drunk cowboy was actually the likely outcome of firing a six-shooter in a crowded saloon.

However, reality doesn’t make for a great Western movie. 

There are all sorts of historical myths that have been created over time.

Sometimes it’s just fun to believe they really happened. 

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