What does "Roll the dice" mean to you?

When heard, would you mentally assume more than one die? Would you use the phrase to mean justr one die?

I always picture craps or gaming dice. So, two or more 4-100 sided dice.

It depends entirely on what game one is playing at the time. If it’s D&D, it’s prolly just one die, presumably a d20. If it’s Shadowrun it’s (hopefully) a bunch of dice.

Multiple dice, otherwise I would use the related cliché of “the die is cast.”

When referring to 6-sided cubes with dots, numbers, letters, or symbols on them, “Dice” is plural in the U.S… “Die” would be singular and the phrase, “roll the dice” means to gamble on the outcome of something.

Dice is the plural of die.
As in the a Latin phrase; The die is cast (“Alea iacta est”), attributed by Suetonius to Julius.

It’s a plural word so I’d deduce they meant plural die.
But I do tend to take things literally.

I’ve never th ought of the term as literally rolling dice, but simply alluding to doing something in which you know that there is a possibility of either a positive or a negative result, but you go ahead and do it anyway.

IMNSHO, the difference between “roll the dice” and “the die is cast” is tense, not plurality.

Roll the dice refers to an action I might take in the future. Example: This is risky, but I might roll the dice.

The die is cast, refers to an action I have already taken. Example: Too late to turn back now, the die is cast.

In both cases, it’s two six sided dice. Unless it’s a saving throw, and that’s obviously one twenty sided die.

A little background to the question: I got into an argument with an admin of a (6-sided) dice based gamebook series wiki, after I insisted that the continued use of the phrase “one dice” in one of the installments was a major error, and he was of the opinion that due to the changing way people speak, it wasn’t even an error, let alone a major one.

Poll results unsurprising so far, as the SDMB’s basic literacy is exceeded only by its pedantry. :stuck_out_tongue:

I guess I don’t get the question. “Dice” is plural, period. Using “die” may be pedantic (or just literate) but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything formally written or stated where “dice” meant “one die.”

His opinion literally made my head explode.

We have a word for the singular form of dice, it’s “die”. I don’t remember anyone saying “one dice” in the past, so it’s not some big new language movement. It would be like saying “one mice” or “one knives”. It’s plain stupid.

I seen what you done there.

So that’s why you were shouting “Die! Die! Die!” at him.

I’d suggest, based on an admittedly non-random sample, that most non-gamer people don’t know that the singular of “dice” is “die,” and haven’t for some time. So for someone saying it, I’d just chalk it up to the language changing. It would sound wrong, but I’d be unlikely to, say, correct someone who said it.

A gaming manual, though, is a formal document and should get it right, and since I played a lot of dice-using games in my childhood, I’d get it right unconsciously, too.

Still, this phrase comes up more in a “take a chance and accept the outcome” cliché sense than a literal one for me, in which case the number of dice is unspecified and irrelevant.

I’m not a gamer, but I know and use the singular “die” and plural “dice”—though I have seen the singular dice often. Oxford Dictionaries has the following usage note at dice:

So it’s apparently not new.

Notwithstanding, Bryan Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage says, “In formal usage, the numbered cube used in games of chance is called a die, and two or more are dice. But the word dice is often used sloppily as a singular” and lists this usage as Stage 2 in his Language-Change Index*, which means “The form spreads to a significant fraction of the language community but remains unacceptable in standard usage.”

I tend to agree with Garner’s “sloppily” characterization here, but hey, language does change.

  • Garner’s Language-Change Index has five stages, in short:[ol][]Rejected[]Widely Shunned[]Widespread, but …[]Ubiquitous but …[*]Fully Accepted[/ol]

And he was right.

To me “roll the dice” means "take a chance and then do that thing.’ But when I hear “dice” in a gaming context I assume one or more little polyhedral things.

So you were arguing with someone whose job it is not only to define the rules of a universe, but to tell others how to define a universe using those rules?

Was his name H. Dumpty, by any chance? :smiley:

I gave up when the Ford dealers were talking about how many Focuses they had in inventory.

But yes, using dice as a singular noun marks you as a moron, even more so than this data.