I respect your intuition to drop problematic phrases but you may have been lead astray on "rule of thumb" by a very common rumour (Wikipedia calls it 'modern folk etymology') that that is where it originated.

In fact no law ever existed and it was more used in trades as thumbs were an easy mode of measurement available to anyone (similar to the use of feet to measure!)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb

The Wikipedia article even explains the "switch" rumour and provides some backstory and explanation to it.

So don't feel weird using Rule of Thumb; it has more to do with carpentry than anything else.

Getting gyped” Learned this one is about associating gypsies with getting screwed over, so people started saying they got gyped because something bad happened.

This one is hard for me because my first wife's biological dad was from a family of ... and I can't even say it. My wife used to say "gypsy," and her family all said gypsies, but I can't say "Romani" either because they weren't technically Romani. The family came from Europe via South America and are a large isolated family up and down the US eastern coast. Most of the rulers of this family clan are wanted by the FBI, and they are involved in everything from penny bunko scams to psychic parlors to carnivals and crooked contracting companies. My late wife's family have been on a lot of TV shows since the 1970s, including 60 minutes and several specials on cable TV channels like Discovery. Everyone called them gypsies.

My wife died before the term "gypsy" started to be recognized as a slur, and I am curious how she would have handled it, because people used to ask her, "Oh Romani?" "No." "Irish Traveler?" "No, they are the Ristick/Ely clan." "... what?" But let me tell you, that family was very weird. Some of them still lived in vardas but most were circulating through private residences in common suburban neighborhoods. They were real hard to catch and pin down because almost all the top family members had multiple aliases, moved around a lot, and even my wife's dad had several marriages, and claimed the kids on his taxes for decades, even if they were in their 30s (which is a problem my wife had to deal with, like having to tell the IRS, "No, I am 33 and married, I not 8 living with my dad in eastern Ohio."). They have a very specific philosophy about their family as "chosen people" who were, as one story goes, forgiven by God because they stole one of the nails from the cross used to crucify Jesus. They don't even consider what they do fraud or stealing any more than you or I would think a monkey owns a camera. I was married to her for 25 years, and heard all sorts of stories about that family, and why my mother-in-law ended up leaving.

Here's an article from 1997 about them.

Never knew that about "rule of thumb". Personally, I think some expressions like that are so far removed from their original meaning that they really are innocuous for all practical purposes, but I see your point.

(Hard agree on "gyped" though LOL)

Man what the fuck, "rule of thumb" sounded like the most innocuous and random shit, why must you do this to me.

The rule of thumb thing has zero evidence that it is true, and much evidence it is a baseless myth.

For fucks sake this shit drives me crazy, you people stop using common words or terms for reasons that aren't even true!

I hope you learn from this that you shouldn't just blindly believe whatever stupid shit you hear so you can virtue signal.