Word.ws English Dictionary

three score and ten

three score and ten numeral: seventy, being the number of years in a full lifetime of traditionally-expected duration.

Numeral

three score and ten

  1. (dated, idiomatic) Seventy, being the number of years in a full lifetime of traditionally-expected duration.
    • "Why, a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone more. Where’s his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying in the face of the Bible like that? Threescore-and-ten’s the mark, and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what’s expected of him, has any...1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC
    • As for old Capt. Hugh Roger, three-score-and-ten had exhausted his fluids, pretty much; but he shook me heartily by the hand.1845, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 30, in Satanstoe

Examples of three score and ten in a sentence

  • Frank: And he won't die until he's three score and ten: he hasn't originality enough.1894, George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, act 4:
  • In a nutshell, my philosophy is this: You only get three score and ten so make the most of it.2008 July 4, Hannah Kuchler, “The 5-minute Interview: Wayne Hemingway, Designer”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 18 Jul 2015:

Forms of three score and ten

alternative formthree-score and ten
alternative formthree-score-and-ten
alternative formthreescore and ten
alternative formthreescore-and-ten

Origin of three score and ten

From the Bible, Psalm 90, verse 10: "The days of our years are three score and ten."

Questions about three score and ten

What does three score and ten mean?
Three score and ten means seventy, being the number of years in a full lifetime of traditionally-expected duration.
How do you use three score and ten in a sentence?
Frank: And he won't die until he's three score and ten: he hasn't originality enough.
What part of speech is three score and ten?
Three score and ten is a numeral.

Words near three score and ten in the dictionary

  1. three ring circuses
  2. Three Rivers
  3. Three Rocks
  4. three Rs
  5. three score and fifth
  6. three score and ten
  7. three seconds rule
  8. three seconds rules
  9. three sheets
  10. three sheets in the wind
  11. three sheets to the wind

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: three score and ten (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-three score and ten.ogg.

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