Word.ws English Dictionary

ex pede Herculem

ex pede Herculem phrase: a maxim of proportionality: one can extrapolate the size of a thing from the size of a part.

Phrase

ex pede Herculem

  1. A maxim of proportionality: one can extrapolate the size of a thing from the size of a part.
    • When he made this handy list Albert Henry Poleash little thought—Boots, size 9; […] weight, 11st. 81bs. There we have the man: Ex pede Herculem, as the motto has it—only in this case of course the hat and gloves are more useful.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

Origin of ex pede Herculem

Latin [Term?] (literally “from his foot, [we can measure] Hercules”)

Questions about ex pede Herculem

What does ex pede Herculem mean?
Ex pede Herculem means a maxim of proportionality: one can extrapolate the size of a thing from the size of a part.
What part of speech is ex pede Herculem?
Ex pede Herculem is a phrase.

Words near ex pede Herculem in the dictionary

  1. ex nihilo nihil fit
  2. ex nunc
  3. ex officio
  4. ex opere operato
  5. ex parte
  6. ex pede Herculem
  7. ex post
  8. ex post facto
  9. ex professo
  10. ex proprio motu
  11. ex proprio vigore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ex pede Herculem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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