Comment by anonymars
18 hours ago
> exception that proves the rule
That's not how that works; "someone is doing this" doesn't prove a rule "no one is doing this" -- quite the opposite
"The exception that proves the rule" is for things like "closed Thursdays" (rule = open on other days), "no parking after 8 PM" (rule = parking allowed before 8 PM), "no refunds on games" (rule = refunds available on other items), etc.
You're confusing "The Exception That Proves the Rule" (in English, as used colloquially) with "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (in Latin, which has a use similar to what you're describing.) While the law attempts to be precise, common usage embraces ambiguity.
> exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
Or more succinctly, as first-year law students learn: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to state one thing is to implicitly exclude others.
https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alt...
RIP modus ponens!
They really mean the same. What changed was the meaning of the word "proves" in English. When the saying was coined it meant "tests", not "confirms". People kept saying the...saying even though they were using it backwards.
Which is amusing because “proving grounds” is still using the old definition of “proves” :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule:
> "The exception that proves the rule" is a saying whose meaning is contested. Henry Watson Fowler's Modern English Usage identifies five ways in which the phrase has been used…
Personally, I use it in cases like:
- Rule: Don't do X, it's a bad idea.
- Exception: One time, someone with very special circumstances did X, and with a lot of finagling and effort they managed to make it work sort of OK.
Or:
- Rule: This fortress was an impregnable defensive position.
- Exception: In A.D. 1305, the fortress was taken, with great difficulty and many casualties, by an attacking army 100 times larger than the defending force.
Or:
- Rule: This river never overflows its banks.
- Exception: Once in history, on the day of the biggest rainstorm in 1000 years, the river is recorded to have overflowed its banks very slightly for a short time.
The exception proves the rule because the circumstances necessary for the exception to occur were themselves exceptional.
But we all knew what they meant and here you are being tedious about it
I didn't really know what they meant by it. Sounds like "the fact that you do this proves that nobody does it".
I believe the phrase is used to mean something like "the fact that you found something that is obviously an exception proves that the rule normally applies."
For example, imagine if your skydiving instructor said "if your parachute doesn't open when you jump out of the airplane, you're gonna die", and you replied with "well actually that's not true, Vesna Vulović survived a fall from high altitude." Yeah, okay. The fact that you had to be smarty-pants about it and dig up a random exception really proves the point they were trying to make.
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It's a common rhetorical technique that never convinces me. I'm not convinced this guy's anecdote is an exception to some rule.
I knew what he meant and still thought it spawned an interesting discussion. Mainly because I've never quite intuitively understood that saying. So, I did not take it as OP being tedious about it at all.
That’s why we’re all here together friend.