What Is A Plus Or Minus Score Used For?

You may have heard someone refer to a score as a quantity and wondered what it ways. A score is 20. Although people don't use the term much anymore, you can find examples of it in literature and history.

Where Did "Score" As 20 Come From?

The commencement use of the word "score" to refer to 20 items goes dorsum to around 1100. "Score" was a term for counting herds of sheep or cattle. Shepherds or cattle hands would count xx of the livestock and brand a marking on a stick to indicate that they had counted 20 sheep or cows. Counting by scores immune the livestock hands to keep up with large quantities of cattle or sheep without losing count.

T he Origin of the Give-and-take "Score"

The discussion "score" comes from the One-time Norse word "skor," which meant to put a notch on something. The people who took intendance of livestock actually fabricated notches on a stick to help them remember how many cows they had counted. That's why the discussion "score" came to represent the number twenty.

A ncient Counting Systems

From the ancient world to the Middle Ages, people used different counting systems, much like nosotros use twos, fives and tens to count today. For instance, counting by dozens is a throwback to older counting systems.

Other ancient counting systems include Roman numerals, which yous'll often see when you picket old movies. For example, a motion-picture show made in 1938 may testify the yr equally MCMXXXVIII, with each letter of the Roman number representing a different value.

U ses of Scores in Former Texts

Nosotros tin discover counting by scores in the Bible, as well as in other texts. In the Bible, you lot tin can encounter counts of scores in older translations like the Rex James Version. Ane example of counting by scores in the Bible includes Exodus fifteen:27. Here the Israelites encountered seventy palm copse, or "60 and ten palm trees."

Y'all tin also come across the discussion "score" to refer to twenty of something in famous literature similar the plays of Shakespeare. In

Macbeth, an old human says, "Sixty and ten I can recollect well." What he ways is that he tin remember the last 70 years of his life.

S cores in Famous Speeches

You tin find examples of American speakers using the word "score" to represent 20 of something. Using that method of counting allows the speaker to make a betoken that sounds like something out of the Bible or literature. For case, in Martin Luther King's "I Take a Dream" speech, he referenced the Emancipation Announcement, which went into issue 100 years earlier, past saying "five score years ago."

"Four Score and Seven Years Ago"

Of course, the most memorable apply of "score" is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Lincoln began that famous speech with a reference to "four score and seven years ago." That number of years (87) refers to 1776, when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.