Definition
Small cubes, traditionally made of bone or ivory, marked with figures or devices on their several sides and used in playing games of chance. In legal contexts, dice appear almost exclusively in connection with gambling law — specifically in statutes criminalizing games of chance, prohibiting gambling devices, or regulating gaming establishments. The term functions as a legal object of prohibition rather than as a term of art with technical legal meaning of its own.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Small cubes used in games of chance or randomization; also used as a verb meaning to cut food into small cubes, or to ornament with square patterns.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Small cubes used in gaming or in determining outcomes by chance; also the game played with such cubes.
The legal significance of the gap here is directional rather than definitional: the culinary and decorative senses of "dice" that are entirely ordinary in common usage have no foothold in legal sources. When dice appear in a legal text, they are almost certainly gambling instruments — and a researcher encountering the word in a statute or indictment should read it in that register, not the kitchen one.
Common Confusion
Dice should not be confused with the broader category of "gambling devices" or "gaming implements," which in many statutory schemes encompasses cards, wheels, electronic terminals, and other instruments. Dice is a specific physical object; whether it qualifies as a "gambling device" under any particular statute depends on how that statute defines the category. Some older statutes enumerate dice by name; others sweep them in by general definition. The difference matters when reading historical indictments or regulatory codes.
Why It Matters in Research
Dice as a legal term is almost entirely a creature of criminal and regulatory law, and its significance in the corpus shifts dramatically across time and jurisdiction.
In 19th-century American sources, dice appear frequently in criminal codes and indictments as a named prohibited instrument. Many states passed statutes specifically naming dice alongside cards and other gaming implements. A researcher working with antebellum or Reconstruction-era criminal records will encounter dice in charging documents, jury instructions, and appellate opinions construing whether a particular game qualified as an illegal game of chance. The Alabama case referenced in both Black's editions — Wetmore v. State, 55 Ala. 198 — is a real point of entry into this body of law.
By the 20th century, as gambling regulation became more comprehensive and administratively sophisticated, dice recede as a standalone legal term and are absorbed into broader statutory definitions of gaming devices or gaming equipment. Modern regulatory frameworks (Nevada, New Jersey, tribal gaming compacts) address dice through technical equipment standards rather than criminal prohibition.
A researcher using the Law Mind corpus should be alert to two things: first, that older statutes naming dice may use variant spellings or the singular "die" interchangeably; second, that Anderson's cross-reference to "GAME" signals that the real legal substance — elements of illegal gaming, the distinction between games of skill and chance, the role of dice in establishing the chance element — is carried by the parent entry, not this one.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the physical definition and offer little variation worth parsing. Both Black's first and second editions define dice as small cubes of bone or ivory used in games of chance, with the second edition's citation to Wetmore v. State making the Alabama reference traceable. Anderson's treats the term as entirely derivative, cross-referencing GAME without supplying an independent definition — a reasonable editorial choice given that the legal action attached to dice is always about the game being played, not the object itself.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is any regulatory or licensing dimension. By the time modern commercial gaming law developed, these dictionaries were no longer the primary reference tools for practitioners in that field. Researchers should treat the historical entries as adequate for 19th-century criminal law contexts and look elsewhere for 20th-century regulatory meaning.
Jurisdictional Note
State gambling statutes varied considerably in whether dice were specifically enumerated as prohibited instruments or subsumed under general gaming device definitions. Some states distinguished between social gaming with dice and commercial operation; others made no such distinction. Tribal gaming regulation under federal law (IGRA) treats dice games as a defined category for purposes of compact negotiations. Researchers should not assume that a holding on dice under one state's statute transfers to another without checking the specific statutory text.