Origin of The Phrase
The exact origin of the phrase is uncertain. The earliest citation comes from J. Durham’s Heaven upon Earth, 1685, ii. 217: "Many profest Christians are like to foolish builders, who build by guess, and by rule of thumb." The phrase also exists in other languages, for example Swedish tumregel, Norwegian and Danish tommelfingerregel, sometimes in the variant "rule of fist", for example Finnish nyrkkisääntö, German Faustregel or Dutch vuistregel, as well as in Turkish parmak hesabı (rule of finger) and in Persian "قاعده سرانگشتی," which is translated as finger's tip rule. This suggests that it has some antiquity, and does not originate in specifically English-language culture.
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