"Scores" = high amount? [closed]
Read a news on BBC, I have some questions regarding a word scores in this context:
"A BBC team inside Syria filming for Panorama has witnessed the aftermath of a fresh horrific incident - an incendiary bomb dropped on to a school playground in the north of the country - which has left scores of children with napalm-like burns over their bodies.
Eyewitnesses describe a fighter jet dropping the device, a low explosion, followed by columns of fire and smoke.
Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway's report contains images viewers may find extremely distressing."
Question:
Does scores refer to very high amount?
How high is the amount for scores?
Could massive replace scores in this context?
Any clarity of ideas would be highly appreciated, thank you.
One score is twenty (see meaning 5). The author here uses scores to suggest a magnitude: a number that is unknown except that it is somewhat more than dozens, but still less than hundreds.
I would not say it is very common in spoken English, but you'll find it in more formal writing. Americans will recognize it from the opening line of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
Fourscore and seven years ago
meaning 87 years ago, but expressed in this way to emphasize the youth of the republic.
Since scores here is a numerical range, it cannot simply be replaced with massive. One could say a massive number of children, or simply numerous children, but this contains less information as there is no indication of scope; dozens would be better.
A dozen is 12, a score is 20. It's probably less than if they'd said, "hundreds of children". So it's a number of children most easily counted in scores (plural). If it had been any less they could have said, "dozens or tens" but they didn't and they didn't say "hundreds" either, so the amount is probably somewhere in the 60 - 199 range- purely speculation. Who knows except the author how many there really were.