Common misuse of the expression ‘the exception that proves the rule’

Posted by | April 04, 2003 | trivia | No Comments

Regarding the previous posting about the Washington Post OpEd, one could counter with ‘the exception proves the rule’ – wrong.

One of the historical meanings of the word ‘prove’, which is no longer in currency, was ‘test’. So the expression more properly reads ‘the exception which tests the rule’.

An exception puts a rule to test, it does not and cannot prove it in any way.