Score (Quantity)

The classic British counting unit of 20, historically tracked by carving notches into wooden tally sticks.

This vigesimal counting base was deeply embedded in British rural economy, land assessment and taxation before decimalisation took hold. Its most literal survival is the shepherd’s tally: a man counting a flock reached twenty, cut a notch in his crook, and started again, so that the notches — the scores — recorded the flock. The word carries that origin into every modern sense it has, from a scoreboard to settling a score.