Word.ws English Dictionary

fourscore

UK/ˈfɔːskɔː//ˈfɔɹskoɹ/

fourscore numeral: eighty.

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]...
    • Euen thoſe that were numbꝛed of them, were eight thouſand, and fiue hundꝛed, and foureſcoꝛe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Numbers 4:48
  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

Noun

fourscore (plural fourscores)

  1. A quantity or amount of eighty.
    • W. J. Davis, a retired missionary, a veteran in the fourscores of his years.1922, James Edward Carruthers, Memories of an Australian Ministry, 1868 to 1921, page 125

fourscore meaning in Tamil and Bengali

fourscore in Tamil

எண்பது

fourscore in Bengali

আশি পরিমাণ, সংখ্যা

Examples of fourscore in a sentence

  • “I could be sorry for these men,” he said, “ay, and for that poor Queen, but what avail earthly sorrows to a man of fourscore?—and it is a rare dropping morning for the early colewort.”1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in The Abbot. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme...
  • Old Martha was standing at a table trussing a pair of chickens for the market stall as she had trussed them for nearly fourscore years.1914, Saki, ‘The Cobweb’, Beasts and Superbeasts:

Synonyms of fourscore

Forms of fourscore

Numeral
alternative formfour score
alternative formfour-score
Noun
pluralfourscores

Origin of fourscore

From four + score.

Phrases with fourscore

Questions about fourscore

What does fourscore mean?
Fourscore means eighty.
What is fourscore in Tamil?
Fourscore in Tamil is எண்பது. See Fourscore meaning in Tamil.
How do you use fourscore in a sentence?
“I could be sorry for these men,” he said, “ay, and for that poor Queen, but what avail earthly sorrows to a man of fourscore?—and it is a rare dropping morning for the early colewort.”
What part of speech is fourscore?
Fourscore can be a numeral or a noun.
How do you pronounce fourscore?
Fourscore is pronounced /ˈfɔːskɔː/ (UK).

Words near fourscore in the dictionary

  1. fourragère
  2. fourragères
  3. fourrier
  4. fourriers
  5. fours
  6. fourscore
  7. fourscore and seven years ago
  8. fourscores
  9. fourses
  10. foursies
  11. foursome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fourscore (page history and authors); fourscore (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fourscore (Bengali Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-fourscore.ogg.

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