Q: 'die', 'dice'

[Paul Hopper]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Growing up in the south of England (Surrey and Sussex), I had never heard
the singular "die" until my early teens, and then only in the expression
"the die is cast". "Dice" stood for both singular and plural, definite and
indefinite ("Why don't you boys play Monopoly?"-"We haven't got a dice"),
but I share Robert Orr's intuition that the indefinite singular form is
quite rare, so that it was usually irrelevant whether "the dice" was
singular or plural. Until I read Larry's posting, I didn't realize there
were people for whom dice was only plural.
On John Hewson's "threppence", where I grew up that was said mainly by aged
aunts and girls from Roedean; we said thruppence (with u as in full). I
also recall "thrupny bit" for a three pence coin, with u as in full. The
old half-penny was a ha'penny [heypni], also archaically showing the vowel
change of alf > al > a: > ey. My grandmother, who was from Yorkshire, said
eighteenpence for one and a half shillings [one and sixpence], and this
also goes to show how very traditioned these common money combinations were
before the currency change. She also said five-and-twenty for twenty-five
when telling the time.

Paul Hopper

----------------------
Paul Hopper
Thomas S. Baker Professor English and Linguistics
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Phone (USA)(412)268-7174
Fax: (USA)(412)268-7989

--On Tuesday, April 03, 2001 8:27 AM +0000 Robert Orr <colkitto at sprint.ca>
wrote:

> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> I remember die and dice from my youth in Britain.
>
> People still remembered the correct usage, but among children, "dice" had
> become a noun morphologically equivalent to "sheep", "deer" (one dice, two
> dice)
>
> It was nearly always used with the definite article, though.
>
> "Shake the dice". etc.
>
> Robert Orr
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
> To: HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU <HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU>
> Date: Monday, April 02, 2001 8:52 PM
> Subject: Q: 'die', 'dice'
>
>
>> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>> Nothing hangs on this: I'm just curious.  Is my native English becoming
>> obsolete in yet another respect?
>>
>> Traditionally, a spotted cube used in playing certain games is called a
>> 'die', with the uniquely irregular plural 'dice'.  This is still, I
>> think, the position in American English.  In British English, however,
>> the singular 'die' has almost wholly disappeared, and the singular form
>> is now 'dice'.
>>
>> American board games invariably instruct the player to 'throw a die',
>> while British games equally invariably instruct the player to 'throw a
>> dice'. Most Britons do not even know that 'die' is another word for one
>> of these cubes, and most of them are flummoxed when I say something like
>> "throw a die", which they find utterly mysterious.  And most Britons do
>> not understand the origin of the expression 'the die is cast'.  British
>> dictionaries now enter the word under 'dice', and merely cite 'die' as a
>> less usual singular form.  Some years ago, I was playing Scrabble with a
>> very well-educated British woman, and she played DI, assuming that this
>> must be the spelling of the mysterious word she had often heard me use.
>>
>> However, in the last few years, I've begun to hear 'throw a dice'
>> occasionally from Americans -- something which I'm pretty sure I never
>> heard when I was growing up in the States.  So, I'm wondering.  Is the
>> British usage now becoming established in the States?  Can anybody tell
>> me anything about this?  And, while I'm here, what about Canada,
>> Australia, the Caribbean, anywhere?  Are we users of 'die' a dying
>> breed?  (Sorry.)
>>
>>
>> Larry Trask
>> COGS
>> University of Sussex
>> Brighton BN1 9QH
>> UK
>>
>> larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>>
>> Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
>> Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)
>>