Scoreless

How to spell scoreless

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scoreless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scoreless mean?

1. adjectiveHaving no points scored, or ending with neither side having scored.

Scoreless in a sentence

• The match stayed scoreless until the final ten minutes.

• Both teams left the field after a scoreless first half.

Where does scoreless come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word joins two very old parts. The first, 'score', comes from the Old Norse 'skor', which literally meant a notch or scratch cut into a tally stick to keep count; Scandinavian settlers brought it into Old English, and because tallies were often grouped in twenties, 'score' also came to mean a set of twenty. From keeping count it naturally took on the modern sporting sense of points won in a game. The second part, the suffix '-less', descends from the Old English 'leas', meaning 'free from' or 'without', the same element you find in 'careless' and 'hopeless'. Put together, 'scoreless' simply describes a contest in which no points have been recorded, and the spelling is reassuringly regular: keep the whole word 'score' intact and add '-less' with a single s, since the trap is wanting to drop the silent 'e' or double the final letter.

How the word is built

• score (from Old Norse skor: a notch or tally used for counting)
• -less (suffix meaning 'without', from Old English -leas)