The Meaning and Use of Domino

Domino is a generic name for a type of game pieces that can be used in a wide variety of games. In the past, domino sets were made of many natural materials: bone (especially silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell, or MOP), ivory, and dark woods like ebony, with contrasting white or black pips inlaid or painted on them. Modern sets are typically manufactured from polymer materials such as ABS or PVC.

The most common use of domino is to play games with them. A domino set consists of small, rectangular pieces that are marked on one side with pips or numbers, and are designed to be stacked end to end in long rows. When the first domino in a line is tipped over, it causes all of the other ones to fall over as well. Some players use the resulting pile of fallen dominoes to create artistic designs such as curved lines, grids that form pictures, or even towers and pyramids.

In addition to games that involve a large number of dominoes, there are also simple, single-player games. These are based on the principle that each player tries to place a domino edge-to-edge against another in such a way that their total pips match, or “dominate”, a particular value such as five to five, or twelve to twelve.

Other uses of the word domino are related to the concept of domino theory, which is the idea that a small initial event can trigger a chain reaction with larger–and sometimes catastrophic–consequences. This idea is often used in the context of international politics, where one country or leader can influence events in other countries and regions.

For example, if the president of a nation supports Ngo Dinh Diem and non-communist forces in South Vietnam, this can have a domino effect on the political and military situation in neighboring Laos. It can also have an impact on the United States’ commitment of resources to support anti-communist forces in the region.

A more abstract use of the word domino is the concept of “domino action,” which refers to a high leverage act that causes an effect similar to that of a falling row of dominoes. This can be used either literally (about a series of actual collisions) or metaphorically (about causal linkages within systems such as global finance or politics).

For example, if a writer is a pantser rather than an outliner, and she starts the story with a character’s discovery of a key piece of evidence in her case against the defendant, then writes a scene where the defendant denies that they ever did anything wrong, she has not demonstrated domino action at all. Instead, she has just thrown up a big red herring. The next thing the reader might notice is that there’s no tension, and that something is wrong. This is because, as the domino effect demonstrates, if you don’t have a solid plot, even the simplest domino actions will have minimal logical impact on the scenes that come before or after them.