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The other day I heard someone on a TV show say "the exception that disproves the rule" (I don't know which show it was; the television was just on in the background as I was talking to a few friends). I thought that iteration was an interesting evolution, and one that I hope would catch. In the most common current usage, I hear "the exception that proves the rule" to mean something the words of the phrase cannot sustain. Namely, people use that phrase to say that there is an exception that does not follow the "rule". But actual "rules" do not have exceptions. I know the actual -- logical -- meaning of the phrase is one of an exception that follows, maybe strains, yet does not break, the "rule", whatever that rule might be (from the same origin as our continuing use of mathematical *proofs*). Yet the usage with common currency seems to be one of reference to an "exception" that does not follow whatever purported "rule", which exception would make the "rule" not a *rule*, no? So an *exception* would necessarily *disprove* (or, more properly, *show disproof of*) the rule, which is why I hope the saying I heard would overtake the illogical one.
I may be picking at nits and whatnot, but I wonder how the current usage has any logical consistency. I may be alone thinking about this -- anyone else? Can anyone logically defend the contemporary use?
The saying "the exception proves the rule" comes from an older sense of the word "prove", meaning "to test the validity of". If you apply an exception to a supposed rule, you "prove" the rule in that sense, regardless of the outcome of that test.
This is the same sense of "proof" used for the potency of liquor. A solution with a sufficiently high alcoholic component will catch fire, and is therefore "proof"; lighting it "proves" its alcohol content.
Everything you say, Mr. Draney, is correct. I recognize the original meaning of the English word "prove" (as an ESL teacher and a speaker of Spanish, I can see the word *prove* in the Spanish *probar*, meaning *to try*, and that is the derivation from late Latin from which we get our current saying (misused as it often is)). I just wonder if others have recognized the misuse, if that new use is somehow accepted, and why that would be logical.
This is interesting. Less than a year ago I would have read Mr Draney's post and thought to myself "oh, of course, I never thought of that before". But some time in the last six months or so, I was debating with a friend of mine and when he said that my exception "proved the rule" I thought about it and decided not to accept the proverb. What does that saying mean?, I asked querulously. Can you name one exception that has ever proven a rule? Then I went to look it up.
It turns out—or this is what I found when I went looking, and I accept it—that "exception that proves the rule" is indeed intended to mean what it sounds like, but it's wrong, ie misquoted. The original is a legal principle dating back to some Roman—Lucullus? Cicero? Cicero, I think, or at any rate a lawyer—who pointed out that if there's an exception codified in law, it proves that there is a rule. For instance, if there's a law that says emergency vehicles may exceed 35mph in town under certain circumstances, that by itself is a demonstration that 35mph is the recognized speed limit for non-emergency vehicles, and also for emergency vehicles outside those circumstances. If a parent tells his child she may stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve, you may take it that midnight is past her bed-time on other nights. The existence of the exception proves that there is a rule; the exception proves the rule.
Ron, I wouldn't dream of sneering at your contributions normally. But in this case I think I believe the explanation I found. Shall we match citations and see which ones come out sounding more authoritative? If you have some, I may end up being persuaded I fell for some faux etymology.
I agree, by the way, with your older sense of the word "prove"; I'm just saying I don't think that's the origin of this misunderstood proverb.
I read the article, but it doesn't seem to be inconclusive. The author got a lot of letters on the subject, but in the end he agreed with one of them...which happens to be the same thing my sources came up with. I even <immodest smirk> remembered Cicero correctly!, which calls for a little preening since I don't know the old Roman writers.
It was an interesting article, though.
The Cicero rationale is aptly and eerily adaptable to interpreting Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, but with a most regrettable result: By specifically naming the 10 territories to emancipate (instead of issuing a blanket decree), Lincoln appears to validate slavery, or at least concede its staying power: Exception fortifies rule!
In my opinion he didn't just appear to validate it. Lincoln, by all the evidence I've heard, tried very hard to decide what was right and to do it—a man of great moral courage, or so it appears—but I disagree profoundly with some of his decisions. His decision to—
But this is a forum about words. Maybe I should leave it alone.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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