But that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Stinky-breathed Komodo dragons probably evolved from a perfectly nice little fish.
This packaging was clearly designed by someone who doesn’t speak English – or a LOLcat – as they’ve made the cardinal error of applying logic. Consequently they’ve come up with exactly the mistake that the native speaker doesn’t make. Mind you, they’ve probably just skipped a century or two of language development. If dice is accepted as the singular now, ‘dices’ is surely in the future.
Generally I think of myself as a linguistic conservative, on the grounds that language innovations will be different everywhere so older forms are going to be more widely understood. Also, it’s interesting when a word is a misfit. It tells you a lot about its origins – from the Latin ‘datum’ in this case, by way of mediaeval French.
Indeed English spelling tells you so much about the etymological origins of a word that it’s basically useless for telling you how they’re pronounced. But die/dice is just annoying. Following the usual pattern, you’d expect the singular to be douse. When a word needs a rule all for itself, you begin to wonder if you’re not overindulging it.
I think dice should be acceptable as the singular now. Die can be reserved for the technical phrase “twenty-sided die”.
#1 by Nanci Skinner on August 31st 2011 - 1:55 am
The problem is that ‘dices’ is a perfectly legitimate word, if not at all related to pip-covered cubes, and won’t be caught by a spellchecker. The real question is whether these will also make julienne potatoes.
#2 by Richard Chapman on August 31st 2011 - 2:52 am
I’d prefer the verb ‘cube’, but ‘dice’ will win because it rhymes with slice, instead of pube. Also, some people instructed to cube three potatoes will cut them into twenty-seven.
But they’re probably the same people who use die as a noun.
#3 by Tim S on August 31st 2011 - 9:45 am
All your spelling are belong to us