# Gettysburg Address and chunks of time **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 22, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876 "2019-06-22T02:31:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/1 "2019-06-22T02:31:10Z")
When Lincoln gave his famous speech, was “score” a common term or was he just being eloquent and poetic? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/2 "2019-06-22T02:51:02Z")
[Wikitionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/four_score_and_seven_years_ago) says it was common usage at the time. But it gives no evidence that this was so. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/3 "2019-06-22T02:51:16Z")
It goes back to the Bible > [@Psalm 90 King James Version](#): > > The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. In 1863 the Bible would have been expected reading of any literate person in the United States. In fact, it might be the only real book people would ever have read or owned. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/4 "2019-06-22T03:28:39Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > It goes back to the Bible > > In 1863 the Bible would have been expected reading of any literate person in the United States. In fact, it might be the only real book people would ever have read or owned. That’s a good point. ---
**Author:** ![Carlarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@Carlarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carlarm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/5 "2019-06-22T03:37:08Z")
Perhaps this was so people might mistake his references to the Declaration of Independence were instead to the Constitution and thus support his abolishment of slavery. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/6 "2019-06-22T03:57:25Z")
I also found the word “fourscore” in a couple of Shakespeare plays. Lincoln was familiar with and influenced by both the King James Bible and Shakespeare. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/7 "2019-06-22T05:04:50Z")
People still use “score” occasionally, just not in everyday language. “A dozen a gross and a score Plus three times the square root of four Divided by seven Plus five times eleven Is nine squared and not a bit more” There’s also the children’s poem “How many miles to Babylon”, which is still quoted in kids poetry books today: “How many miles to Babylon Three score and ten Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again If your heels be nimble and light You may get there by candlelight” Wikipedia also cites some early lyrics of [Humpty Dumpty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty) that have “Four-score men and four-score more” being unable to put him together again ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/8 "2019-06-22T05:13:14Z")
I also just had a little browse through Project Gutenberg to see if I could catch the flavour of nineteenth-century usage. Jane Austen never seems to use it. But Dickens does pretty frequently, and not in the mouths of particularly “high-falutin” characters. So for what that’s worth … it seems like the sort of thing someone of Lincoln’s era might choose to say without seeming overly florid ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/9 "2019-06-22T07:56:42Z")
Checking a few machine-readable books I have on this laptop, I see Jack London, Adam Smith, Jonathan Swift and Charles Darwin are among many authors who used ‘score.’ Jack London’s _Call of the Wild_ even uses ‘fivescore’ instead of ‘hundred’, as do Shakespeare and Martin Luther King, Jr. > [@Jack London](#): > > To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. ‘Fivescore’ may have been considered more precise than ‘hundred’ since even in some fairly recent contexts ‘hundred’ meant ‘sixscore.’ There are a few languages with roots in base-20 scattered all over the world, but there is a particular concentration in Western Europe: Basque, Celtic, French, English. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2019, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/10 "2019-06-22T12:19:38Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > I also just had a little browse through Project Gutenberg to see if I could catch the flavour of nineteenth-century usage. Jane Austen never seems to use it. But Dickens does pretty frequently, and not in the mouths of particularly “high-falutin” characters. So for what that’s worth … it seems like the sort of thing someone of Lincoln’s era might choose to say without seeming overly florid This ties with my own experience. “Score” is much more likely to be used by bookmakers and street vendors than opera-goers. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/11 "2019-06-24T06:25:13Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > ‘Fivescore’ may have been considered more precise than ‘hundred’ since even in some fairly recent contexts ‘hundred’ meant ‘sixscore.’ > > There are a few languages with roots in base-20 scattered all over the world, but there is a particular concentration in Western Europe: Basque, Celtic, French, English. Interesting. Thanks for that. Makes me tempted to use it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/12 "2019-06-24T11:29:24Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > There are a few languages with roots in base-20 scattered all over the world, but there is a particular concentration in Western Europe: Basque, Celtic, French, English. Spanish and Catalan also have words for “a group of twenty” (_veintena_ / _vintena_ respectively), but they’re not very used; in either language you can have grosses based on scores same as you do based on dozens. But the way grammar works in them means that when you count more than one you do it without generating a new word, whereas in French or English it’s a new word. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/13 "2019-06-24T13:04:04Z")
There’s a cartoon that appeared in _Playboy_ back in the 1960s that I love. It’s done in 19th century engraving style, and shows Lincoln working on the speech at his desk with scraps of discarded drafts around him. The caption reads something like: “‘Seven dozen plus three years ago…’ No, that doesn’t sound right. ‘a Century minus thirteen years ago…’ No1 Still not right! …” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/14 "2019-06-24T16:20:23Z")
Remember, Lincoln was not the principal speaker at Gettysburg. He simply made some “dedicatory remarks.” [The star of the day was supposed to be Edward Everett, who gave a two-hour speech. Here’s his opening line.](https://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/the-other-gettysburg-address) > [@Some windbag history forgot](#): > > Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. Compared to Everett, Lincoln must have sounded downright folksy. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/15 "2019-06-24T17:48:49Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > Remember, Lincoln was not the principal speaker at Gettysburg. He simply made some “dedicatory remarks.” [The star of the day was supposed to be Edward Everett, who gave a two-hour speech. Here’s his opening line.](https://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/the-other-gettysburg-address) > Compared to Everett, Lincoln must have sounded downright folksy. To his credit, Everett may have been the first person to acknowledge the greatness of Lincoln’'s speech: > [@](#): > > Edward Everett was quick to acknowledge the greatness of Lincoln’s brief speech. The day after the ceremony, he wrote to the president praising the “eloquent simplicity & appropriateness” of his remarks. “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” Lincoln sent an immediate and gracious response: “In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little that I did say was not entirely a failure.” ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/16 "2019-06-24T20:25:35Z")
BTW, the Gettysburg Address happened 10 fortnights after the battle. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/17 "2019-06-24T23:07:38Z")
Looking at Lincoln’s contemporaries, I see “score” used in both prose and poetry. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a short essay, “Bread and Circuses”, published at the start of the Civil War, uses it twice. The first is similar to Lincoln’s usage: “And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us.” “Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country…” [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40196/40196-h/40196-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40196/40196-h/40196-h.htm) Henry David Thoreau was notable for using a relatively plain style in comparison to his contemporaries (especially compared to orators like Edward Everett). His short essay “Walking”, delivered as a lecture several times throughout the 1850s and published 1862, uses “score” twice: “There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life.” “I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them.” “Score” appears 12 times in the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; in 8 of those it refers to years: “When each [man] had numbered more than fourscore years, And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten” It also refers to numbers of people: “Seven hundred and fourscore Men at arms his livery wore” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/18 "2019-06-24T23:12:12Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > BTW, the Gettysburg Address happened 10 fortnights after the battle. Why, that would cover the entire time twixt planting and harvest! ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/19 "2019-06-24T23:14:47Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > When Lincoln gave his famous speech, was “score” a common term or was he just being eloquent and poetic? Also, the speech was not originally viewed as eloquent or poetic: “We pass over the silly remarks of the President,” he wrote in his newspaper. “For the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.” "Here’s the Chicago Times, a leading Democratic paper: “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly flat dishwatery utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” > **[My Great-Great-Grandfather Hated the Gettysburg Address. Now He’s Famous For It](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/my-great-great-grandfather-hated-the-gettysburg-address-150-years-later-hes-famous-for-it-180947746/#63FmKSLSAIc0L1bm.99)** > > It's hard to imagine anyone could pan Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, but one cantankerous reporter did just that ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2019, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876/20 "2019-06-25T05:01:14Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly flat dishwatery utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” Ouch! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gettysburg-address-and-chunks-of-time/835876.md?page=2)