dice: [14] Dice originated, as every schoolboy knows, as the plural of die, which it has now virtually replaced in British English as the term for a ‘cube marked with numbers’. Die itself comes via Old French de from Latin datum, the past participle of the verb dare (and source also of English date). The main meaning of dare was ‘give’, but it also had the secondary sense ‘play’, as in ‘play a chess piece’.
The plural of the Old French word was dez (itself occasionally used as a singular), which gave rise to such Middle English forms as des, dees, and deys and, by around 1500, dyse. The singular die survives for ‘dice’ in American English, and also in the later subsidiary sense ‘block or other device for stamping or impressing’ (which originated around 1700). => date, donate
early 14c., des, dys, plural of dy (see die (n.)), altered 14c. to dyse, dyce, and 15c. to dice. "As in pence, the plural s retains its original breath sound, probably because these words were not felt as ordinary plurals, but as collective words" [OED]. Sometimes used as singular 1400-1700.
