Why does a score mean twenty?

[Haggisdj]

I have Googled and cannot find the answer...

[allotment10]

http://www.businessballs.com/moneyslanghistory .htm#slang%20money%20meanings%20and%20origins
scroll down about halfway and it gives you why it came about.

[Haggisdj]

All has become clear now. Thank you very much.

[Bellringer]

The old shepherds could only count up to as many fingers & toes that they had. When they got to twenty they made a mark or score on either a stick or on the wall. then counted the 'scores'. Don't know what they did if they had lost a finger or two or if they had to cope with more than 4oo sheep.

[Ginger30]

A rather long anwer here - but I prefer the 10 fingers and toes remark earlier. "Score" rose from the Old Norse skor, meaning notch, and skera meaning to cut or shear -- an origin it shares with "shard" and "share" (from the notion of divvying something up). It entered the English language in the 14th century as a verb meaning to "notch with lines" and a noun meaning "twenty" -- a use familiar from the Bible's "threescore and ten" (that is 70) and Abraham Lincoln's "fourscore and seven years ago" (that is 87). What did 20 have to do with cutting? The best available guess is that 20 was a standard reference mark when putting notches in a stick (known as a tally) to keep track of debts owed.