Fourscore means eighty. A score is an old-fashioned word for twenty, so fourscore means four times twenty.

You've probably heard this word in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which begins: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.” Lincoln was saying that 87 years earlier (in 1776), the United States was founded. He chose this old way of counting to give his speech a formal, serious tone, similar to the language of the Bible and other important historical documents.

People rarely use fourscore in everyday conversation today. We just say “eighty.” But writers and speakers sometimes reach for it when they want their words to sound weighty and significant, connecting their message to history and tradition. You might also see threescore (sixty) or threescore and ten (seventy) in old texts or formal speeches, though these are even less common now.