"Rule of thumb" (1685)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 07:08:32PM -0400, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007, Bonnie Taylor-Blake wrote:
>
> >I haven't seen the entry for "rule of thumb" in the _Random House
> >Unabridged
> >Dictionary_ (2006), but I understand it may contain an estimate of
> >1685-1695
> >for the origin of the phrase.  If so, is this based in part on Durham's
> >work?  Or does this simply reflect speculation that "rule of thumb" existed
> >for some time before 1692?
>
> The datings in the Random House dictionaries are speculative.

That's a little misleading. The date ranges in the RH
dictionaries are meant to suggest that the coinage date is not
something that can be quantified exactly, i.e. that the first
known quotation is probably not the coinage. Giving a date
range is meant to suggest this uncertainty in a more direct
way than, say, providing an exact date of a first quote along
with a note in the front matter discussing the issue.

In any case, it's a regular thing, where the date of the first
known example is put into a timespan whose range varies depending
on the age of the term. So any word with a first quote of 1692
was given a date of 1685-1695.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the evidence used was the
OED or some other source, not RH's citation files.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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