Die

How to spell die

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce die

What does die mean?

1. verbTo stop living; to cease to be alive.
2. nounA small cube marked with numbers on each face, used in games; the singular of dice.
3. nounAn engineered tool or mould used to cut, stamp, or shape material.

Die in a sentence

• verb

  Without water, the houseplants will quickly die.

• noun

  He rolled a single die to decide who moved first.

• noun

  The factory used a steel die to stamp each coin blank.

• verb

  The gardener warned that the seedlings would die without shade.

• noun

  The board game came with a wooden die in a felt pouch.

• noun

  A worn die in the press left a faint ridge on every part.

Where does die come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This little word arrived from the Old Norse verb deyja, meaning 'to pass away' or 'to lose life'. It is closely related to the Old English forms steorfan (which gave us 'starve') and sweltan, but the Norse word eventually won out in everyday English speech, probably reinforced by Scandinavian settlers in the Middle Ages. Behind the Norse word lies a much older Proto-Germanic root dawjan, 'to die', linked in turn to ideas of fading and ceasing. The noun sense meaning a small numbered cube comes by a completely separate route, from the Latin datum, 'something given', through Old French de, which is also why the plural is the irregular 'dice'. Because 'die' sounds exactly like 'dye' (to colour cloth), the two are a classic adult spelling mix-up despite their entirely unrelated histories.

How the word is built

• die (single base word; no prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like die

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• dye: To change the colour of fabric, hair, or another material by soaking it in a coloured solution.