a. [f. FOUR a. + SCORE sb.] Four times twenty, eighty. Formerly current as an ordinary numeral; now arch. or rhetorical.
c. 1250. Gen. & Ex., 2911.
| Fowre score ȝer he [Moyses] was hold, | |
| And aaron ðre more told. |
1297. R. Glouc. (1724), 382.
| Þo deyde he in þe ȝer of grace a þousend, as it was | |
| And four score and seuene, as God ȝef þat cas. |
c. 1340. Richard Rolle of Hampole, Prick of Conscience, 754.
| If in myghtfulnes four scor yhere falle, | |
| Mare es þair swynk and sorow with-alle. |
c. 1585. R. Browne, Answ. Cartwright, 58. They knewe of whome that prophecie was giuen in the fourescore and nynthe Psalme.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., III. i. 56. I haue liued foure-score yeeres, and vpward.
| Ibid. (1600), As You Like It, II. iii. 74. | |
| At seauenteene yeeres, many their fortunes seeke | |
| But at fourescore, it is too late a weeke, | |
| Yet fortune cannot recompence me better | |
| Then do die well, and not my Masters debter. |
c. 1720. Prior, Daphne & Apollo, 69.
| I’m now (they say) sixteen, or something more; | |
| We mortals seldom live above fourscore. |
1750. Chesterf., Lett. (1792), II. ccxix. 345. I have been lately informed of an Italian book, which I believe may be of use to you, and which, I dare say, you may get at Rome; written by one Alberti, about fourscore or a hundred years ago, a thick quarto.
1870. Bryant, Iliad, I. II. 64.
| All those were led | |
| By Nestor, the Gerenian knight, who came | |
| To war on Troy with fourscore ships and ten. |
1871. Morley, Voltaire (1886), 5–6. The fourscore volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a new renascence.
1878. O. W. Holmes, School-boy (1879), 73.
| Fourscore, like twenty, has its tasks and toys; | |
| In earth’s wide school-house all are girls and boys. |
