The kings and common folk, courtiers and soldiers in these productions add up to threescore or fourscore.

Or fourscore years later, how could the saintly Lincoln, an implacable opponent of slavery, have nevertheless spoken of and believed in African inferiority?

In Mad magazine in 1956, Doodles Weaver offered a copy-proofed edit of the Gettysburg Address, amending “Fourscore and seven years” to “Eighty-seven: Be explicit!”