In a game manual, the only time I’d accept dice when speaking about a single die is with a rule like “Roll as many dice as the number of opponents.” It’s possible to have a single die in this case, but I think it would be unnecessary for a grammar Nazi to insist on clarifiers like die(dice) and opponent(s). We all understand what’s meant.
In casual speech, I’ll forgive any errors because you don’t have time to stop and edit your thoughts… but it’s not a mistake I’ll be making, thank you very much.
If someone put “one dice” in a game manual and defended it, their opinion about anything in their own game manual would now be invalid.
Why? “Focus” is a product name, not a descriptive noun. A lens system can have multiple foci. Your Ford dealer probably has a lot of Focuses. I’m not sure this is a valid linguistic focal point.
What’s wrong with that? I didn’t think proper nouns were obligated to follow the same irregular plural forms as the common nouns they were derived from.
Still, if that bothers you, stay away from the Nissan dealership down the road, where they’re selling Maximas.
Even though I KNOW that die is the correct word for a single spotted cube, and “dice” is the plural, I have to admit: even when I’m playing a game with only a single die, I usually say “Roll the dice,” and so do most people I’m acquainted with.
“Roll the die” may be more accurate, but it sounds weird.
Focus is now a English word, so it’s time to stop the nonsense and have it pluralize by a S. Same with similar words, and for crikeyssake it’s not now nor has it ever been “octopi”. **Octopuses! **
A Language is a living thing- get used to it. In fact many of the neologisms are for the better. Many have held on only due to the fact that pedantic highbrows like to look down upon ordinary folks as “morons”.
The only way “roll the dice” can be a universal phrase is in place of the clumsier “roll the die or dice” when the game requires one or more cubes or polyhedrons to be tossed at that juncture. If the instruction is always to roll a single item, it should read “roll the die.”
Granting for the evolution of language in the direction of each piece being called a singular “dice”, which I see as pretty much irresistible by now however much I may lament it, then I would expect such an instruction to have either the specification “roll [specific number, including “one”] x-sided dice”, or otherwise there’s an antecedent by which you are instructed to use “[specific number, including “one”] x-sided dice” and you use however many that was.
“Dice” as a singular is well established, to the extent that I doubt whether most people even know that “die” is the “correct” (i.e., old) singular form. To be understood, which is what matters in a game manual and most other contexts, one should use “dice” whether singular or plural. To insist on “die” is obfuscatory, prescriptivist pedantry.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever for your claim that far more people nowadays use “dice” than “die” for the singular? The results of this poll seem to argue the opposite (though, admittedly, Dopers aren’t an unbiased sample of the general population).
I would only think the word was being used technically correctly if it’s in some official place. I would not expect most people to use the word “die,” and I have, on occasion, chosen to use “dice” for a single die to avoid confusion.
Looks like a lot of people haven’t paid much attention to the OP/poll here.
Some don’t even get it’s about games, or feel the need to point out the existence of the word “die”.
I voted for all the most common ones. I’ll talk pedantically, and expect a game book to be specific, but don’t expect everyone else to be as anal as me.
Even though I know “die” is singular and “dice” plural, I still would say “roll the dice” in a casual conversation, as would everyone else. In an actual rulebook? I guess I’d expect more accuracy, but I probably wouldn’t notice one way or the other.
My Shorter OED doesn’t list that as a use of the word die, but it does list the word die as ‘4 An engraved stamp for impressing for impressing a design on some softer material as in coining…’ and the plural for that is dies.
BTW there are other homonyms which have divergent plurals. E.g. staff (of wood) has plural staves, but staff (of people) has plural staffs.
