score

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /skɔː/, US /skɔːr/^[1]

Etymology

It is late inherited from Old English scoru (“twenty”),^[2][3] borrowed from Old Norse skor (“notch, mark, tally; twenty”),^[2][3][4] related to skera (“to cut”), the cognate of shear,^[3][4] from Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to cut”).^[2] The verb is inherited from Middle English scoren, from the noun, perhaps reinforced by skora (“to notch, record”).^[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Twenty: before 1100.^[3] The idea was probably counting large numbers, as of a passing flock of sheep, by cutting a notch in a stick for each twenty.^[2] Counting in twenties existed also in French and in the Celtic languages.^[2]

Semantic evolution

A financial record, perhaps kept on tallies, is from about 1230, in the Ancrene Riwle,^[3][2] and a reckoning or total amount from about 1330.^[3] A notch, cut or line is from about 1400 in the OED.^[6] A mark chalked up to count a customer's drinks is from the 1590s, extended about 1600 to “amount due, one's debt”,^[2] as in settle a score.^[7] A mark recording a point in a game is from the 1670s,^[2] and the total points of the players is first found in Hoyle's treatise on whist (1742).^[3][2] A written piece of music arranged for several instruments is from 1701, from lines connecting the staves.^[3] The verb meant “to notch, record by notches” about 1390, in Chaucer,^[3] “to gain a point” from 1742,^[2] and in slang “to buy drugs” by 1935.^[2] Scoreboard is from 1826.^[3] In dialect, score could also be the core of an apple (Gloucestershire) or a patch of pasture (Lancashire).^[8]

Timeline

• before 1100 – twenty.^[3]
• c. 1230 – a financial record.^[3]
• c. 1330 – a total amount.^[3]
• c. 1390 – verb, to notch, record.^[3]
• c. 1600 – a debt.^[2]
• 1701 – a musical score.^[3]
• 1742 – points in a game.^[3][2]
• 1826 – scoreboard.^[3]
• 1935 – verb, to obtain drugs.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The number of points made by a player or team in a game.
2. A result in a test: a high score.
3. A group of twenty, or in the plural, many.
4. A notch or line cut in a surface.
5. A grievance or debt to be settled: settle old scores.
6. The written form of a musical work, showing all the parts; the music for a film.

Verb

1. To gain a point in a game; to achieve.
2. To mark with cuts or lines.
3. To arrange or write music for instruments.
4. (slang) To obtain illegal drugs.

Word family

• scorer
• scoreless
• fourscore
• outscore
• overscore
• scorecard
• threescore
• underscore

Related words

• shear
• share
• scar
• tally

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)