Hi
Does the phrase "to have one’s thumb on the scale"involve any kind of deception or a particularly crafty kind of deception? I look forward to your feedback
“He didn’t have his thumb on the scale,” Pattis said. Jurors finished their deliberations on Friday without a verdict, and are scheduled to resume on Monday."
It’s a very old idiom, referring to merchants, stereotypically butchers, resting their thumb on the scale pan when weighing meat, making it seem heavier.
Yep. My dad was a meat cutter (and, to my knowledge, was scrupulously honest). For many many years, he looked for a print ofthisgreat illustration. This was back in the 80’s, and he thought it was a Rockwell. He looked in every single book of Rockwell illustrations he stumbled across, hoping to find it. It was like a quest.
One day, when I was a teenager, I happened to find a magazine selling it, and I got it for him for Fathers Day (or birthday maybe). I had it framed and all. He opened it and said, quietly, “Well, I be damned.”
Anyway, a cool picture illustrating the “finger on the scale” idea.
I understand it’s an old idiom, but when used in the media I thought it might involve a particular degree of cheating. Cheating is cheating. Why use that particular idiom?
GPW’s got it. It was so common among old-school butchers and grocers to surreptitiously hook one thumb on the scale pan, pulling it down for a phantom added weight, that it’s reflected in sayings like “a cabbie who takes the short route and a butcher who doesn’t put his thumb on the scale.”
[del]The OP’s quote is peculiar, though. I’d sort of read it as “he didn’t have his finger on the pulse [of the trial]” instead.[/del] ETA: NM, the line in context is pretty much the standard interpretation.
perhaps a very sly type of deception.
It says in the article (link up tread)
“Mr. O’Donnell is no cheater. He didn’t have his thumb on the scale,” Pattis said."
The other expression in the article is “rigged the deck.” In both cases they seem to just be looking for a colorful expression for cheating. Putting your thumb on the scale just means doing something unseen to make things go your way, but this applies to nearly every form of cheating; the expression does not have any connotation beyond that.
I think you are confused because both sentences have the same meaning. You are looking for a hidden meaning but there is none. It’s just repeating for emphasis: “He is no cheater. He didn’t cheat.”
Thank you all. Very helpful.
davidmich
Because most of the readers would understand the expression instantly. It’s very easy to understand and commonly used.
Because the accusation is that Mr. O’Donnell was interfering with a trial, the cliche’ of having “his thumb on the scale” resonates with the cliche of the “scales of justice,” making the phrase very apt; favoring the defense or the prosecution in seeking evidence would be putting one’s thumb on one of the scales of justice to produce an unjust result.
Why use any idiom? This is actually more like a metaphor than an idiom. Metaphors make the language richer and more interesting.
It’s interesting to me to see the two metaphors used. The prosecution used “rigged the deck” which, which properly done, assures the win for the deck-rigger, so this is an all-or-nothing kind of metaphor. “Thumb on the scale” implies a relatively small influence; clever of the defense to use this one, because the implication is that, at worst, even if he did have his thumb on the scale, that’s only a small amount of difference in the scheme of things.
Which is odd, because the expression is usually “stacked the deck”, which is easier to understand: A deck of cards is “stacked” when it was built explicitly to favor one specific player, as opposed to having been shuffled at random so nobody has an unfair advantage.
Another in this vein is “Dealing from the bottom of the deck”, which implies that the dealer is trying to cheat someone: Cards are usually dealt off the top of the deck, and a dealer surreptitiously dealing off the bottom instead means the deck was stacked and that bottom card is not random.
No, they do not have exactly the same meaning. Having one’s thumb on the scale is a particular sort of cheating, it is corruptly using one’s position to secretly change or bias the outcome of some event in one’s favor. There are many other types of cheating. Adultery and most types of fraud are not “having one’s thumb on the scale”, but are still cheating. The second sentence does not merely reaffirm the first , but clarifies it by saying which particular sort of cheating might conceivably have been going on, but wasn’t.
Why do you ask? I look forward to your feedback.
Mad Magazine’s slightly different take on the phrase.
