THE EXCEPTION THAT PROVES THE RULE

I used this expression in my post yesterday. When I did so, I was reminded of a comment from one of my Danish colleagues, who said that he had never understood it. How could an exception prove a rule?

This is one those paradoxes that turns out not to be a paradox at all. Because prove is in fact a bastardisation of the French word epreuve, which means a test or a challenge. In other words, the expression really means the exception that tests the rule. Which is pretty logical.

Walter Blotscher