no dice
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Refusal or failure to happen
Literally: small cubes used for generating random numbers
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
but as he is making plans to leave Town this week - end, I fear the result was no dice.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “no dice” mean?
Refusal or failure to happen Literally: small cubes used for generating random numbers
Is “no dice” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.