Other forms: vices
A vice is the heavy jaw bolted to a workbench that holds a piece of work still while you cut or file it. American English spells it vise, and that spelling difference is the only reliable way to tell the two words apart on the page.
Because there are two words. The other vice means immoral behaviour — a vice, meaning a bad habit, and vice as a category covering gambling, prostitution and drugs, which is why police forces have a vice squad. And a third, vice- as a prefix, means deputy: vice-president, vice-chancellor, and it is said VY-see in vice versa. Three unrelated things, one spelling, and only context to separate them.
1nounviceA tool with two jaws that grips work while you cut or file it.
“Put it in the vice before you saw it.”
synonyms: vise, clamp
2nounbadA bad habit or immoral behaviour.
“Coffee is his only vice.”
3nouncrimeCrime involving gambling, drugs or prostitution.
“She spent four years in the vice squad.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
vice is a tool, or a moral fault.
Also accepted in games: vise
VICE → it grips like ICE
The heavy metal on the table closes on the wood and holds it as hard as ice, and nothing moves at all until you turn the handle back.
hooks ontoice
The tool comes from Latin vitis, a vine, by way of the spiral of a screw — a vice is tightened by a screw thread, and a vine twists the same way. The moral vice is Latin vitium, a fault or blemish, and the two are unrelated despite arriving at the same four letters.
Proto-Indo-European
*dwóh₁
Latin
vitium — fault or blemish
Old French
vice
Middle English
vice
English, today
vice
From Middle English vice, from Old French vice, from Latin vitium (“fault or blemish”). Displaced native Old English unþēaw.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA