Assertion: exception | /r/CapableOf | prove the rule
Facets:
value: namely
type: MANNER
value: eminently
type: MANNER
value: to be true
type: MANNER
value: sometimes
type: TEMPORAL
Source sentences:
text: The exception that proves the rule" (sometimes "the exception proves the rule") is a saying whose meaning is contested.
text: "all her children were brilliant; the only exception was her last child"; "an exception tests the rule"
text: The exception that proves rule" is often used to describe a case ("the exception") which serves to highlight or confirm ("prove") a rule to which the exception itself is apparently contrary.
text: In this sense, the phrase does not mean that an exception demonstrates a rule to be true or to exist, but that it tests the rule, thereby proving its value.
text: The exception that proves the rule" (sometimes "the exception proves the rule") is a saying whose meaning is contested.
text: The second part of Cicero's phrase, "in casibus non exceptis" or "in cases not excepted," is almost always missing from modern uses of the statement that "the exception proves the rule".
text: The Oxford English Dictionary includes this meaning in its entry for the word exception, citing the example from Benjamin Jowett's 1855 book Essays, in which he writes: "We may except one solitary instance (an exception which eminently proves the rule).
text: The exception proves the rule,” as the quotation books usually phrase it.
text: So “the exception proves the rule” means a close look at exceptions helps us determine a rule’s validity.
text: I was surprised to see the question in your column about the exception proving the rule because I had always assumed the saying came from the “rule
text: It’s the exception that proves the rule
text: Alan Bliss, in A Dictionary of Words and Phrases in Current English, has the following to say about the origin of this phrase: “Exception probat regulam [Lat.], the exception proves the rule.
text: The exception tested ('proved') the rule and found that it needed to be understood a little more precisely - namely, that Jones will never write a favourable review, except of his own work.
text: While the interpretation I gave, namely that the exception tests the rule, has a long history (it dates back at least to 1893), I’ll concede that your take on it is the original sense of the proverb.
text: Here it seems to me that the interpretation I initially favored, that the exception tests the rule, comes off pretty well.
text: This is not far removed from “the exception tests the rule.