Remember how people used to say "The exception that proves the rule".

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The idiom "the exception that proves the rule" means that an exception to a general statement actually emphasizes the truth of that statement. Here are some examples:
"Most company directors are middle-aged men, but this 28-year-old woman is an exception that proves the rule".
"Dury was the exception that proves the rule that you can't make serious points with funny lyrics".
"Steve O'Keefe has become the exception that proves the rule of cricketers' squeaky-cleanliness".

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"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,[1] and each use makes some sort of reference to the role that a particular case or event takes in relation to a more general rule.

Two original meanings of the phrase are usually cited. The first, preferred by Fowler, is that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes ("proves") that a general rule exists. A more explicit phrasing might be "the exception that proves the existence of the rule."[1] Most contemporary uses of the phrase emerge from this origin,[2] although often in a way which is closer to the idea that all rules have their exceptions.[1] The alternative origin given is that the word "prove" is used in the archaic sense of "test",[3] a reading advocated, for example, by a 1918 Detroit News style guide:

The exception proves the rule is a phrase that arises from ignorance, though common to good writers. The original word was preuves, which did not mean proves but tests.[4]

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. There is little evidence of the phrase being used in this second way.[1][2][5]

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Usually, the exception is so rare or seemingly so out of place, it highlights just how "true" the rule actually is. It is so noteworthy that some exception didn't follow the assumed rule, that is a marked occurance.

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Usually, the exception is so rare or seemingly so out of place, it highlights just how "true" the rule actually is. It is so noteworthy that some exception didn't follow the assumed rule, that is a marked occurance.

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I kind of get that but what it actually does is disprove the rule.

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You wouldn’t even notice something if it wasn’t outside the norm, thereby proving there is a norm or “rule.”

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You wouldn’t even notice something if it wasn’t outside the norm, thereby proving there is a norm or “rule.”

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