Mind Your Language
Dot Wordsworth casts the die
Taxi-drivers tell you all sorts of myths about history. (‘Yes, Blackheath got its name from the plague pits they dug there in the Black Death). The internet, it strikes me, is like a taxi-drivers’ convention. I’ve just come across this: ‘The phrase “the die is cast” has nothing to do with gambling or dice; instead, it refers to a mould (die) which has been cast (made).’
That would have come as a surprise to Suetonius, who recounts that when Caesar crossed the Rubicon he declared alea iacta est. Philemon Holland translated it, ‘The dice be thrown’, which would help modern readers unaware that the singular of dice is die. Indeed, confusion about dice as a plural or singular is constant in English, from the time of Caxton, who in his book on chess uses dice in the singular.
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