know the score

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

        "To know the score" almost certainly derives from music, because that's
where "knowing the score" is a bona fide accomplishment, a sign of thoroughly knowing what's going on.  By contrast, anyone paying even minimal attention at a sporting event will have a pretty good idea what the score is. And if  there's any doubt, a quick look at the scoreboard will remove it."Knowing the score" at the sporting takes no special talent or effort at all.

Gerald Cohen


> ----------
> From:         American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky
> Sent:         Saturday, September 11, 2004 12:29 PM
> Subject:           two queries: bobwire, know the score
>
> thanks to having written on reanalytic malapropisms (a.k.a. eggcorns) on Language Log, i collect rather a lot of e-mail about particular examples.  most recently, "bobwire" and "know the score".
        <snip>
> on "know the score", my correspondent noted that he'd seen it in contexts suggesting a sports origin and in contexts suggesting a musical origin (salman rushdie wrote a Guardian column in 1987 entitled "Songs Don't Know the Score").  so presumably one usage was the
> original and the other a reinterpretation (a "hidden eggcorn").  my correspondent favored the musical story, i'd always assumed it was a sports-based metaphor.  checks in some obvious places turned up nothing
> -- so i wonder if there's some reasonably authoritative discussion of
> the history.
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>
>
>