Word.ws English Dictionary

four-score

four-score is the alternative form of fourscore.

Meaning of fourscore

Numeral

fourscore

  1. (archaic) Eighty.
    • Thou ſtick'ſt a dagger in me, I ſhall neuer ſee my gold againe, foureſcore ducats at aſitting, foureſcore ducats.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (idiomatic) A full-length life, reckoned as eighty years.
    • […] I know every life is equally sacred, but that is a thought, another thought, I mean, all these valuable people who aren’t going to have their normal fourscore as it is now, these people aren’t going to be replaced, and it’s such a loss to the culture.1986 November 24, Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 25 Mar 2023

See all 3 meanings of fourscore

Questions about four-score

What is four-score the alternative form of?
Four-score is the alternative form of fourscore.

Words near four-score in the dictionary

  1. four-pounders
  2. four-quadrant
  3. four-ring
  4. four-rings
  5. Four-Russians
  6. four-score
  7. four-seam fastball
  8. four-seam fastballs
  9. four-seamer
  10. four-seamers
  11. four-seater

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: four-score (page history and authors); fourscore (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “four-score.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/four-score. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.