Centuries ago, whenever manuscript writers inserted special instructions or explanations into a book, they put them in red ink to set them off from the black used in the main text. (They used the same practice to highlight saints' names and holy days in calendars, a practice which gave us the term red-letter day.) Ultimately, such special headings or comments came to be called rubrics, a term that traces back to ruber, the Latin word for "red." While the printing sense remains in use today, rubric also has an extended sense referring to any class or category under which something is organized.
the rubrics at the beginning of the chapters are intended to be humorous the rubric, popular among jewelers anyway, that a man should spend a month's salary on his fiancée's engagement ring
Recent Examples on the WebUnder the rubric of competition policy, the government has cracked down on tech platforms. Kevin Rudd, WSJ, 12 Aug. 2022 In addition to utilizing a rubric or scorecard to ensure objectivity during the hiring process, candidates should be asked a series of questions to better ascertain their interest and commitment to racial equity. Janice Gassam Asare, Forbes, 11 Aug. 2022 The rubric included items like whether the student’s data was disposed of and whether it was shared with other parties.Wired, 4 Aug. 2022 Having a clear rubric for prioritization will help everybody feel good with the final decision. Expert Panel®, Forbes, 6 June 2022 Documents about the former might fall under the rubric of attorney-client privilege, but documents about the latter have utterly no chance of obtaining the privilege. Jay Adkisson, Forbes, 8 Aug. 2022 The judges graded each audition that day with a rubric and issued scores based on the artists’ preparation, delivery, quality, stage presence, and creativity.al, 4 June 2022 Aggarwal and his collaborators looked at the lowest-risk individuals eligible for screening under that rubric: 35-year-olds who are just barely overweight (with a BMI of 25). Claudia Wallis, Scientific American, 27 July 2022 This is a special Fire Island edition of the 212, T’s rubric devoted to New York institutions that have defined cool for decades, for our Summer Entertaining issue.New York Times, 22 July 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English rubrike red ocher, heading in red letters of part of a book, from Anglo-French, from Latin rubrica, from rubr-, ruber red