dicey
adjective

- slightly dangerous, risky or uncertain

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

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ORIGIN

During World War II, RAF (Royal Air Force) pilots had to find ways to entertain themselves between missions. One answer was gambling, sometimes with card games like poker. Other times they might play dice.

RAF pilots didn't make so much money that they could easily afford to gamble it away, and by analogy a roll of the dice was just as risky as flying a combat mission. So when pilots undertook a mission that was risky, they began to refer to them as "dicey."

The most common gambling game with dice is called "craps." Two dice are rolled and the players bet on the outcome. If the player rolls two ones, meaning that each dice shows one spot in the middle, it's referred to as "snake eyes."

Because this is the lowest possible roll, and will often be a loser in many dice games, the term has been employed in a more general usage as a reference to bad luck.

Ancient Roman dice games used the term dogs to describe a throw of double ones, referring to this as "the dog throw".

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SYNONYMS

capricious, chancy, dangerous, iffy, precarious, ticklish, tricky, uncertain, unpredictable

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Practice OWAD in a conversation:

"Investing in real estate can be a DICEY strategy. It requires an excellent sense of timing."