Definition
An obsolete English legal term for a tally used in accounting, distinguished by its method of recording: the number of cuts, marks, or notches made in a stick or piece of material. The dica was a physical record-keeping device through which debts, payments, and transactions were documented by incision rather than writing, making it legible to parties who could not read text.
Common Confusion
Dica is closely associated with tallia (tally) and should not be treated as a synonym without care. The tally was the broader category of notched accounting instrument; dica appears to denote specifically the account or reckoning as represented by those cuts, rather than the stick itself. Historical sources use the terms in near-interchangeable contexts, but researchers consulting Cowell or the Liber Rubeus Scaccarii (Red Book of the Exchequer) should note that dica may emphasize the numerical reckoning function while tallia may refer more concretely to the physical object.
Why It Matters in Research
Dica surfaces almost exclusively in medieval English legal and financial records, particularly those connected to Exchequer procedure. Researchers working in early common law sources, manorial accounts, or records of the royal treasury will encounter the term in contexts where physical tallies served the legal function of written receipts and enforceable evidence of debt. The practical significance is considerable: in medieval English law, a tally could constitute proof of payment or obligation in a manner courts would recognize, and the dica represented the numerical heart of that record.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, the term is Latin in form but used as English legal vocabulary, which means it may appear in both Latin legal texts and early English-language legal commentaries without translation. Second, because dica is tied to an accounting practice largely discontinued by the early modern period, it does not appear in post-medieval legal dictionaries as a living term — its presence in Black's and Burrill's is purely historical. Researchers should not expect to find dica in nineteenth- or twentieth-century case law.
The connection to the Exchequer is significant for archival research. The Liber Rubeus Scaccarii, cited by Burrill as a supporting source, is a genuine thirteenth-century record of Exchequer customs and procedures held among the English public records. Its citation here lends the term concrete documentary grounding and points researchers toward that collection for primary source investigation.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's — provide essentially identical definitions, each tracing the term to Cowell's Interpreter (1607), the standard early glossary of English legal terms. The agreement across sources reflects common derivation rather than independent verification; all three are reporting Cowell's account.
Burrill's entry is marginally richer, adding the Liber Rubeus Scaccarii as a parallel authority and directing the reader explicitly to both Tallia and Tally as related entries. Black's cross-references Tallia and Tally without the Exchequer citation. None of the historical dictionaries explains the mechanics of the tally system beyond the basic description of notches and marks, and none addresses the legal enforceability of dica-based records or their procedural role in Exchequer practice — gaps a researcher pursuing the functional history of medieval accounting instruments will need to fill through primary sources and specialized scholarship.
Jurisdictional Note
Dica is specific to old English law and Exchequer practice. It has no recognized counterpart in Scots law, early American law, or civil law jurisdictions. Research use is confined to English medieval legal history.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Tally and Medieval Accounting Instruments
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Exchequer: History and Procedure