What does fourscore mean?
Fourscore means eighty — literally four twenties — and is an archaic or deliberately formal way of expressing that number in English. It belongs to an old tradition of counting in scores, where a 'score' equals twenty, a practice reinforced by shepherds tallying sheep in groups of twenty and by biblical phrasing such as 'threescore years and ten'. Although everyday English has long replaced it with 'eighty', fourscore retains a powerful cultural presence: it appears throughout the King James Bible and is immortalised in the opening of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 'Four score and seven years ago'. Because of these associations, using fourscore today lends a sentence gravity, ceremony, or an antique flavour, whether marking a person's age ('fourscore years') or the span of an institution's history. It functions as both a noun denoting the number and, adjectivally, a modifier of counted nouns.
The number eighty; four times twenty.
"A fourscore of villagers gathered in the square for the harvest festival."
Often used of years or age in formal or scriptural contexts.
Amounting to eighty; modifying a noun to indicate a total of eighty (as in 'fourscore years').
"She reflected on fourscore summers spent along the same coastline."
The plural is rare and used only when referring to multiple separate quantities of eighty, typically of people or things grouped in eighties.
"Fourscores of pilgrims arrived over the course of the week."
When Lincoln said 'Four score and seven years ago,' he was using counting-by-twenties — a habit English borrowed for shepherds tallying sheep with notches cut in a stick.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of fourscore
The word combines 'four', from Old English 'fēower', with 'score', from Old Norse 'skor', meaning a notch or tally — reflecting the ancient practice of cutting marks into a stick to count in twenties. Counting by scores was long established in Germanic languages, and phrases like 'threescore and ten' entered English largely through biblical translation. Fourscore was common from the medieval period onward but gradually gave way to straightforward decimal expression, surviving mainly in literary and ceremonial use into the nineteenth century.
How fourscore is actually used
Fourscore is archaic and literary in modern English; it survives chiefly in quotations, religious language, ceremonial speech, and historical writing. The spelling varies between 'fourscore', 'four-score' and the modern open form 'four score'. Speakers today would normally say 'eighty'; choosing 'fourscore' signals deliberate formality, solemnity, or allusion to classic texts such as the Gettysburg Address or the King James Bible.
Easily confused with fourscore
'Score' alone means twenty (or, in modern use, points in a game), whereas 'fourscore' specifically means four twenties, i.e. eighty.