What is a dais, and how should you pronounce that word?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says a dais simply is:

“A raised platform (as in a hall or large room)”

The Cambridge Dictionary has a longer definition:

“a raised surface at one end of a meeting room that someone can stand on when speaking to a group”

Dais actually is a ‘walking dead’ noun – it died before 1600 and then was revived after 1800. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) begins with two different main definitions 1.a and 2.a, and then it continues with three more:

“1. a.A raised table in a hall, at which distinguished persons sat at feasts, etc.; the high table. (Often including the platform on which it was raised: see 2).  Obsolete since 1600.   

 1. b. to begin the dais: to take the chief seat, or preside at a feast: see BEGIN. Also to hold the dais in the same sense. Obsolete.

2. a. The raised platform at one end of a hall for the high table, or for seats of honour, a throne, or the like; often surmounted by a canopy. Obsolete since 1600, until revived c1800 in historical and subsequently in current use. 

2. b. By extension: The platform of a lecture hall; the raised floor on which the pulpit and communion table stand in some places of worship.

2.c. In Freemasonry (1866 quote) the platform or raised floor in the East, on which the presiding officer is seated.

3. In some early examples (chiefly northern) it appears to have the sense ‘seat, bench’; so in Scottish (a) ‘a long board, seat or bench, erected against a wall’, a settle; also ‘a seat on the outer side of a country house or cottage’; (b) a seat or bench, or pew in a church (Jamieson); chamber of dais;

4. transferred (from 2) A raised platform or terrace of any kind; e.g. in the open air.

5. [after modern French – not an English sense.] The canopy over a throne or chair of state.

Under 2.a. the OED gives an example sentence from Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1386 The Merchant’s Tale (with the Middle English spelling):

“And atte fest sittith he and sche With other worthy folk upon the deys.”

As shown above, the Old Senate Chamber in the U.S. Capitol had a dais for the Vice President with an ornate canopy.

How should you pronounce the word dais?

The Cambridge Dictionary gives two different pronunciations – an American one with two syllables (day-iss) and a British one with just one (dace or deys – pronounced to match how Chaucer once had spelled it).

An article by Nancy Keates in The Wall Street Journal on November 23, 2016 titled You’re saying it wrong: design words that will trip you up claimed: 

“Dais (a low platform or stage) is pronounced DAY-is, not DIE-is.”

A brief article at The Grammarist says:

“It is pronounced /dā-əs/ (day-iss) or /ˈdī-əs/ (die-us). Dais is commonly misspelled as dias. Its plural form is daises and is pronounced either (day iss iz) or (die us iz). Side note: Daises is commonly found as a misspelling of daisies (the white flower).”

Presumably a misreading of dais as dias (dyslexic?) gave rise to some pronouncing it as die-us.

Four other books I found in a search at Google Books discuss pronunciation. Page 95 in Santo J. Aurelio’s 2004 book How to Say It and Write It Correctly Now: The Ultimate Reference Book says:

“Dais (DAI-is, DY-is)”

Conversely page 124 in Charles Harrington Elster’s 2006 book The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations – The Complete Opinionated Guide claims you should use (DAY-is):

“…never say die.”

But he also begins his entry by noting:

“Burchfield (1996) points out that dais was pronounced in one syllable (rhyming with lace) until the beginning of the 20 th century but in two syllables since then.”

Page 45 of Ross and Kathryn Petras’s 2016 book You’re Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words – and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse also says to never say die. But they also note that in American English dais went from one syllable to two. And page 184 of Elster’s 2018 book How to Tell Fate From Destiny: And Other Skillful Word Distinctions repeats that ‘never say die’ in an entry titled lectern, podium, dais, rostrum. It seems to have been styled after an article in a 1985 book he quoted in his 2006 one. That nasty article on page 153 of William and Mary Morris’s Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, 2nd edition (1985) says:  

“Dais / podium / lectern  The three terms involve furniture in a meeting hall, lecture hall, or concert hall, and are frequently confused and misused.

A dais is a raised platform on which a speaker, along with officers of the club or organization, sits or stands.

A podium is a special kind of dais in that it is intended to accommodate only one person, such as an orchestra conductor. The small stand on which a speaker rests his notes is a lectern, not a podium. It would be very unusual for a speaker to ‘grasp the podium’ as one writer reported. The only speaker likely to ‘grasp the podium’ would be one who has fallen flat on his face. The most common error, however, is in the pronunciation of dais. It is pronounced just as it is spelled: DAY-iss. An astonishing number of otherwise educated people say DY-iss, which is incorrect.”

I found it hilarious that they incorrectly claimed a dais just was furniture. The image I show above has one built into the room and covered in wall to wall carpet.

There are times when pronouncing dais as (die-us) is appropriate. Three decades ago in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? there was the following dialogue:  

Eddie Valiant: You mean, you could’ve taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?

Roger Rabbit: No, not at any time, only when it was funny.

A comedian is entitled to say (die-us) when his jokes are not working, since he is ‘dying’ on that platform.