three score and ten

1 9.9

Seventy years that people often use to mean a typical human lifespan

noun

Archaic

: setenta años

I can only devote a limited amount of time to the accomplishment of the work, as the duration of life is uncertain, especially after a person has passed three score and ten years.

Examples

As he celebrated his three score and ten birthday, he reflected on the lessons of his long life.
Many cultures consider three score and ten to be the average lifespan of a person.
'I saw the old poet down in town the other day, three score and ten, and I asked him: At your age, Sophocles, what of love?'

Fiction book (2001)
According to the saying, a life that reaches three score and ten years is a full one.

Surface Forms

three score and ten singular

three scores and tens plural

Morphology

three + score + and + ten

The meaning 'seventy years' is directly and compositionally derivable by combining 'three' (3) × 'score' (20) + 'ten' (10) = 70, so the numeric sense follows transparently from the constituents. Although 'score' is somewhat archaic, if a learner knows its meaning as 'twenty' the phrase is a straightforward arithmetic composition and thus predictable.

Etymology

Three score and ten comes from old Bible language where a score meant twenty, so three scores plus ten makes seventy. It was used to talk about the usual length of a life, so today the phrase means 'seventy years'.