Scores

How to spell scores

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce scores

What does scores mean?

1. nounThe numerical results or points achieved in games, tests, or contests.
2. verbAchieves a point, goal, or mark; third person singular present.
3. nounLarge but loosely counted numbers of people or things, literally groups of twenty.

Scores in a sentence

• noun

  The final scores were posted on the league website that evening.

• verb

  She scores at least one goal in nearly every match.

• noun

  Scores of volunteers turned up to help clear the flooded street.

• noun

  Both candidates compared their test scores before the interview.

• verb

  The new model scores highly in independent safety tests.

• noun

  The festival drew scores of visitors from neighbouring towns.

Where does scores come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word goes back to the Old Norse skor, which meant a notch, a cut, or a mark scratched into something. Norse settlers in England used such notches as a counting device: a tally stick was nicked to record numbers, and every twentieth nick was cut deeper, so 'a score' came to mean a group of twenty. From this practical bookkeeping the word branched out in two directions that survive in the modern plural: the running tally of points kept in a game, and the large, loosely counted quantity meaning 'twenties' or 'lots'. By the time it settled into English in the late Old English and early Middle English period, the noun also carried the sense of a debt marked up on a slate, the origin of phrases like 'settling the score'. The same humble idea of a cut mark links it to the verb 'to shear' and to 'shard', all from a Germanic root meaning to cut. The simple spelling rarely traps adults, since it follows the regular 'core' pattern with an s added.

How the word is built

• score (from Old Norse skor: a notch, a tally of twenty)
• -s (plural/third-person verb suffix)