Tag Archive for dice

No Dice!

You long-time readers of this blog know that I’m a word person. I love puns (which I’ll spare you of today) and oddball origins of expressions (which I will offer you today). Have you ever wondered how “no dice” came to mean “nothing doing,” something a person says when they refuse to accept a course of action? Here it is.

This phrase originated in the U.S. in the early 20th century. In most states, gambling with dice was against the law, so players hid the dice when police showed up—some even swallowed them! When police had no dice to submit into evidence, courts often simply dismissed the case. Here’s what was said in a 1921 court case of six men charged with gambling with dice: The city attorney asked the arresting officer if he actually saw the men shooting dice.  When the officer said he saw no dice, the men were acquitted.  Thus, the birth of the expression “no dice,” growing from the idea of no dice = no conviction.

Convict Him? No Dice!

Here’s one for the gamblers.  I haven’t inflicted one of my interesting (to me) word/phrase origins on you for some time.  So, here goes.

“No dice”  —  what a person says when he refuses to accept a proposition or course of action.

In the early 1900s in many states, dice-gambling was popular but illegal.  How to get around the law?  Hide the dice when the cops came, of course.  That way, the main evidence against you—the dice—couldn’t be produced in court, leading to your case being dismissed.  So that’s what gamblers did: hid the dice, and sometimes even swallowed them!

A reporter for The Port Arthur Daily News (Texas) wrote a story in 1921 about when an officer testified at trial and admitted that he could not find any dice when he arrested the defendants. The judge ruled that the defendants could not be convicted because there were “no dice.”

It is considered highly probable that the “no dice = no conviction” decision is the origin of today’s use of “no dice” to mean “nothing doing.”