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shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

Dicey

Just call me Snakeyes.

Dear Word Detective:  I read that you are a native or at least previous resident of New Jersey, as I am also.  I was gone for around 10 years, from 1995 to 2005 and upon retuning, I’m hearing a word that just wasn’t part of the vernacular when I left.  The word, “dicey,” is used here in NJ in the sense of things being a bit “touchy” or “critical” or something. But I was wondering if there’s an origin to this word as it applies now.  My guess is it’s like dicing up a tomato — it gets sloppy and mushy, sort of like the situation it’s used in. — Bill Becker.

Yes, it’s true.  I was born in Princeton, but I learned to walk early and left shortly thereafter.  I also lived in a suburb in northern New Jersey for one ill-advised year in the late 1980s, surrounded by what were then called yuppies.  I still break out in hives when I see Burberry plaid.

That’s an interesting theory you’ve come up with about “dicey” and dicing tomatoes, which does indeed make a nasty mess.  Incidentally, I’ve found that if you leave them in the freezer overnight and then just drop them on the floor, you get nice little pieces without all that bother.

I received another question about “dicey,” meaning “risky or dangerous,” from a reader a few years ago but never got around to answering it (sorry, Bill P.), which is a shame because he included an interesting story he had heard about the word.  “Dicey,” the story went, originated among Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots during World War II.  When the weather at their home fields was too bad to permit landing when returning from a mission, they would fly north to an airfield called Dice, where the skies were almost always clear.  Thus bad weather came to be known as “Dicey,” a term later expanded to describe anything risky.

Two bits of that story are true.  “Dicey” did begin as RAF slang during WWII.  And, as Bill P. discovered in his research, there is indeed a “Dice” airfield at Aberdeen, Scotland, evidently known for its clear weather.

But the roots of “dicey” lie, not in the clouds, but on the gambling tables (or the floor of an RAF hangar).  “Dicey” comes from “dice,” the plural of “die,” the little spotted cubes of chance used in many games.  A mission that was “dicey” to the RAF pilots was fraught with danger, and their safe return was as uncertain as a roll of the dice they often used to pass their time on the ground.  This sense of both chance and danger has carried over to our modern use of “dicey” to mean “seriously risky,” often with overtones of disaster if the effort fails.

5 comments to Dicey

  • RICHARD DAVIES

    Dicey is definitely RAF slang from the second world war.
    My mother served in the WAAF at Hornchurch Aerodrome during the Battle Of Britain, this was one of the premier British aerodromes and close to London. She said that they had a visit from a London Newspaper Journalist who was doing a story about the RAF pilots. When the story appeared in the paper it was about “Our brave lads dicing with death”. Thereafter anything a bit risky was dicey.

  • Nick Mitchell

    It is indeed to do with rolling dice and not the airfield near Aberdeen (which is spelt Dyce)

  • In 1951, I was on a RAF pilot training course, and one of the flight instructors, a WWII vetran, would always announce a training session by saying, “come on, let’s dice”! It was taken to derive from
    “dicing with death” a fate not unfamiliar to those then and now engaged in military flying.

  • Claire

    I have heard this expression before and how it originated from Dyce. However, Dyce is definitely not known for it’s “clear weather” It is probably one of the widiest runways in Scotland – the wind generally blows from West/east and the runway runs north/south (or the other way around) and that leads to problems with crosswinds. I heard that the expression came from the RAF landing at windy Dyce – not landing there because it was wind elsewhere. Don’t know if it originated from there though.

  • karl

    Im unsure of the recent RAF related origin. I had come across an origin story some years ago, but i cannot refind now and I really don’t know it provenance, but its a good tale.

    There was a Irish “cartographer” surnamed Dicey. In the 1700’s he decide to capitalise on the similarity of his surname to Cluer Dicey & Co. who were reputable map makers, and the scoundrel Dicey literally made up maps of the then New World and Far East and sold them to merchants, adventurers and explorers. The maps were clearly perilous, and lead to the expression that unreliable maps were “dicey”. By the mid 1800’s this use had widened to mean risky and dangerous generally.

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