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 on the floor
  2. four one one
  3. four penny nail
  4. four penny nails
  5. four pips
  6. four score
  7. four score and seven years ago
  8. four score and ten
  9. four score seven years ago
  10. Four Seasons
  11. four sheets in the wind

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.

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