How Much Is a Score in Money?

Q: Why does score mean twenty?

It comes from Old Norse skor, a notch. Tally counters cut a mark for each item and a deeper score across the stick at every twentieth, so a score came to mean the group of twenty itself.

A score is £20. If someone offers you a score for something, or says a job paid a score, they mean twenty pounds.

It is worth clearing up one thing straight away, because most explanations get it wrong: a score is not Cockney rhyming slang. It does not rhyme with anything. It is simply the old English word for twenty, and it has meant twenty for far longer than rhyming slang has existed.

At a glance

A score: £20
Type: Plain slang, not rhyming slang
Comes from: 'Score' meaning twenty
Age: Centuries old
Still used?: Yes, widely

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22 terms

Quid£1
Origin disputedOrigin genuinely unknown. The most repeated explanation is the Latin quid pro quo; another points to Quidhampton, site of a Royal Mint paper mill. Neither is proven.
Nicker£1
Origin disputedIn use since the early 1900s. The derivation is unclear — possibly linked to nickel.
Lady Godiva£5
Rhyming slangCockney rhyming slang for fiver. Usually shortened to 'a Lady'.
Jacks£5
Rhyming slangFrom 'Jack's alive' — rhyming slang for five.
Tenner£10
Plain shorthand for a ten-pound note, not rhyming slang.
Cockle£10
Rhyming slangFrom 'cock and hen' — rhyming slang for ten.
Ayrton Senna£10
Rhyming slangRhyming slang for tenner, after the Formula 1 driver. Often just 'an Ayrton'.
Darwin£10
Charles Darwin appeared on the Bank of England £10 note from 2000 until 2018.
Score£20
'Score' has meant twenty for centuries — from tally counting, where every twentieth notch was scored across. It appears in 'four score and seven'.
Pony£25
Origin disputedWidely claimed to come from a 25-rupee note bearing a pony, but no such note is known to have existed. The real origin is undocumented.
Bobby£20
Rhyming slangFrom Bobby Moore, the 1966 World Cup-winning England captain — rhyming slang for score.
Macaroni£25
Rhyming slangRhyming slang for pony, so it carries the same value.
Bullseye£50
From darts, where the inner bullseye scores 50.
Half a ton£50
Half of a ton, which is £100.
Ton£100
A ton has long meant a hundred of something — also 100mph on a motorbike.
Century£100
Straightforwardly a hundred, borrowed from cricket.
Carpet£300
Racecourse and betting slang. Commonly linked to a six-month prison sentence — the time it supposedly took to weave a prison carpet — where 'carpet' meant three of something.
Monkey£500
Origin disputedUsually explained by a 500-rupee note showing a monkey. Like the pony story, it is repeated everywhere and evidenced nowhere.
Grand£1,000
American in origin, from the early 1900s — 'a grand sum' of a thousand dollars. Now standard in the UK, often shortened to 'a K'.
Bag of sand£1,000
Rhyming slangRhyming slang for grand. Frequently shortened to 'a bag'.
Long one£1,000
A thousand, mostly heard in betting and trading.
Archer£2,000
After Jeffrey Archer, who was found to have arranged a £2,000 payment during his 1987 libel case.

Values are the amounts these terms mean in everyday British use; several are specific to betting, trading or London speech and would not be understood everywhere. Where an origin is marked disputed, the popular explanation is repeated widely but has no documentary evidence behind it — we have flagged it rather than passing it on as fact.

Key Takeaways

A "score" means £20. It comes from the ordinary English sense of "score" as twenty — not from rhyming slang.
The word predates Cockney entirely. "Score" has meant twenty in English for centuries, from the practice of tallying in twenties.
A "Bobby" also means £20 — that one is rhyming slang, from Bobby Moore.

Where "score" for £20 comes from

"Score" means twenty, and it has done for a very long time. The word traces back to Old Norse skor, meaning a notch or a cut.

The reason is practical. When counting large numbers of livestock, tallies were kept by cutting a notch into a stick — and rather than notch every animal, counters worked in twenties, scoring a deeper mark across the stick at each twentieth. A "score" became the batch of twenty itself.

That sense survived long after tally sticks did. It is the "score" in Lincoln's four score and seven years ago, and in "threescore years and ten" for a seventy-year lifespan. Applying it to money is the last easy step: a score of pounds is twenty pounds, shortened to a score.

You will sometimes read that the term began as a secret code among 18th-century criminals. There is no evidence for that, and it is not needed — the word already meant twenty in ordinary English long before.

A "Bobby" is also £20

If someone says a Bobby, they also mean £20 — and this one genuinely is Cockney rhyming slang. It comes from Bobby Moore, the England captain who lifted the World Cup in 1966. Bobby Moore rhymes with score, score means £20, so a Bobby is £20.

That two-step is typical of rhyming slang: the rhyme gets dropped and only the first word survives, which is why the connection is invisible unless you already know it. It is also why "score" and "Bobby" are different kinds of word despite meaning the same thing — one is plain English, the other is a rhyme built on top of it.

Is a score still used?

Yes, and well beyond London. Asking to borrow a score, or saying something cost a score, is understood across most of the UK.

It sits alongside a small set of amounts that reliably have nicknames — a quid, a score, a pony, a ton, a monkey, a grand — while the numbers in between generally do not. Nobody has a word for £37.

The other amounts that have nicknames

A score sits in a short list of sums that reliably have their own word. The translator above covers all of them, but the ones you are most likely to hear are these:

A pony is £25. The usual explanation involves a rupee banknote with a pony on it; no such note is known to have existed, so treat the story with caution.
A ton is £100. From the general sense of a ton as a hundred of something — the same use as a century in cricket, or doing a ton on a motorbike.
A monkey is £500. Also usually attributed to a rupee note, and also undocumented.
A grand is £1,000, which is American in origin rather than Cockney, and now the most widely used of the lot.
A Lady Godiva is £5, rhyming with fiver — a genuine piece of rhyming slang, unlike most of the above.

The pattern worth noticing is that the words people assume are Cockney rhyming slang mostly are not. Score, ton, monkey and grand are all plain slang. Lady Godiva, Bobby, cockle and bag of sand are the real rhyming ones.

Twenty as a counting unit, beyond money

The reason "score" survives is that counting in twenties was once the normal way to handle large numbers, and the traces are still all over English.

Shepherds counted in twenties. Regional sheep-counting systems — yan, tan, tethera in the north of England — ran in cycles of twenty, with a mark cut or a pebble moved at each completed score. The counter never had to hold a number above twenty in their head.

Tally sticks worked the same way. A notch per item, a deeper cut across the stick at each twentieth. The Exchequer used tally sticks as official records of debt for centuries; the practice only ended in 1826, and burning the accumulated stock in 1834 famously set fire to the Palace of Westminster.

The word outlived the method. "Threescore years and ten" for a seventy-year lifespan, Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago" for eighty-seven — both are just twenty-counting in formal dress. French kept it more visibly: quatre-vingts, four twenties, for eighty.

So a score of pounds is not slang inventing a meaning. It is the last everyday survival of a counting system that predates decimal money entirely.

What a score was actually worth

Twenty pounds has not always meant what it means now. Using the Office for National Statistics long-run price index:

A score in 1950 had the spending power of roughly £960 today.
In 1970, about £435.
In 1990, around £65.

Which is worth remembering when you read the word in an older book or hear it from someone who has been using it for fifty years. "Lend us a score" was once a serious request.

You can check any amount and year with our old money converter.

Frequently asked questions

How much is a score in money?

A score is £20.

Is a score Cockney rhyming slang?

No. "Score" is ordinary English for twenty, from the old practice of tallying in twenties. A "Bobby" — from Bobby Moore — is the rhyming slang term for the same amount.

Why does score mean twenty?

It comes from Old Norse skor, a notch. Tally counters cut a mark for each item and a deeper score across the stick at every twentieth, so a score came to mean the group of twenty itself.

Is a score still used in the UK?

Yes, and not only in London. It is widely understood across the UK in everyday speech, particularly for cash amounts.

More on money slang: why a pound is called a quid · what a pony is · Cockney slang for money · how much a shilling is worth today

More money slang explained: Pony · Monkey · Ton · Bag · Carpet · Nicker · Oner · Grand · Quid · Cockney slang for money