One of the fundamental developments early on that lead to probability theory was the assumption of equally likely cases ... and this was possible only once regular dice had replaced the more asymmetrical knuckle-bones used by Roman gamblers.
reminded me of my earlier investigations of the relationship between stochastic processes & knuckle bones which I have just revisited.
The plot thickens.
Further investigation of stragalos which I was told is the Greek word for knucklebone took me, via the Spanish astrágalo meaning ankle bone or astragalus, back to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Here astragal is defined as the ball of the ankle-joint or HUCKLE-bone & hence in the plural (as in Greek) dice, which were originally huckle-bones!
But then, just to make confusion worse confounded, huckle-bone is defined as the hip- or haunch-bone of man or beast; the ischium or whole os innominatum. (Rarely the head of the thigh-bone which turns in the hip-joint.)
Not ankles after all, but the one you carry the baby on.
I bet someone, somewhere, in some dialect of English, used to call knuckle bones huckle-bones.
