FOURSCORE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fourscore mean? 

• FOURSCORE (noun)
  The noun FOURSCORE has 1 sense:

1. the cardinal number that is the product of ten and eight

  Familiarity information: FOURSCORE used as a noun is very rare.

• FOURSCORE (adjective)
  The adjective FOURSCORE has 1 sense:

1. being ten more than seventy

  Familiarity information: FOURSCORE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FOURSCORE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The cardinal number that is the product of ten and eight

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Synonyms:

80; eighty; fourscore; LXXX

Hypernyms ("fourscore" is a kind of...):

large integer (an integer equal to or greater than ten)

• FOURSCORE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Being ten more than seventy

Synonyms:

80; eighty; fourscore; lxxx

Similar:

cardinal (being or denoting a numerical quantity but not order)

 Context examples 

They live generally to seventy, or seventy-five years, very seldom to fourscore.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But the usual way of computing how old they are, is by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If a struldbrug happen to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into that on the left side, the king’s smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady’s watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with six-and-thirty padlocks.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)