You seem to be kind of the exception to the rule.

In other words, maybe those families are the one exception to the rule.

I would have to be the exception to the rule.

Why not make an exception to the rule because of the home run race?

Since 1993, the union has allowed some exceptions to the rules.

One bay to the north, however, is an exception to the rule in a number of ways.

London 2012 will not be an exception to the rule.

"I just want to allow for exceptions to the rule."

Or perhaps you simply regard her as the exception to the rule.

It could be, though, that I was the exception to the rule.

Or that this mass was the exception to the rule.

I'm happy to report I enjoy being the exception to the rule.

It turns out this exception to the rule was at the school four years ago.

This year's event, which takes place today, is no exception to the rule.

CA) where the court found exception to the rule on an international matter.

Most have chosen not to change over with a few exceptions to the rule.

The two stories which follow are one of the exceptions to the rule.

A further exception to the rule could be your mortgage.

The exception to the rule is white or cream, since they usually go with anything and everything.

State governments, it seems, are no exception to the rule.

True, there can be the odd exception to the rule.

And I suppose you're the exception to the rule, are you?

So far no players have complained about the exception to the rule.

Even under the law, there is an explicit exception to the rules.

The tensions over the police department are the exception to the rule.

Exceptions to a Rule That probably will not be enough.

His election in 1632 signified the first official exception to a rule set by custom.

At West Stow the one large hall is the exception to a rule of small size and uniformity.

Ms. Castleman calls her exhibition "an exception to a rule that I believe in firmly."

There is always an exception to a rule: I sell an excellent Italian no-cook lasagne.

The discovery of an exception to a scientific theory is a major event, and a scientist can become famous by discovering an exception to a rule.

And before you go saying i'm some exception to a rule, flip over to the Gap Year forum with countless other examples of others doing the same.

Thus "the exception that proves the rule" is a (prima facie or seeming) exception to a rule which tests whether or not the rule holds in all cases.

Also problematic is a widely held opinion that almost every object of considerable interest is some kind of exception to a rule, which enhances a seller's inventory and a buyer's desire.

Driberg prided himself on being an exception to a rule propounded by Cyril Connolly, that the war between the generations is the one war in which everyone changes sides eventually.

For example, a city office building would be required to make an exception to a rule prohibiting animals in public areas in order to admit guide dogs and other service animals assisting individuals with disabilities.

In a neighborhood that has "boutiqued over the years," as the author John McPhee puts it, Blue Point Grill is a welcome exception to a rule of receding mom-and-pops and ever-arriving national chains.

The Kennedys arranged to buy the apartment and persuaded the co-op board, which had Ms. Thomases as its president at the time, to make an exception to a rule requiring that owners occupy their apartments.

Where the problem turns on an exception to a rule (e.g. an exception to the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher ), there is usually no need to state any exceptions other than the one that is relevant.

The F.C.C. has been weighing for more than two months whether it should give Mr. Murdoch a permanent exception to a rule that prohibits a single company from owning both a television station and a newspaper in the same market.

The informal fallacy of accident (also called destroying the exception or a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid) is a deductively valid but unsound argument occurring in statistical syllogisms (an argument based on a generalization) when an exception to a rule of thumb is ignored.

Mark Forsyth claims in his book The Etymologicon that the "prove" in the expression comes from the Latin "probare" meaning not so much to prove as to test (as in proving-ground), and thus that "the exception that proves the rule" is a (seeming) exception to a rule or hypothesis which tests it.