Scores are tallied to decide the winner of a game.
The word “tally” comes from “talea”, the Latin word for stick.
Scoring is the act of cutting notches or nicks onto that stick to keep track.
A stick was sometimes split down the middle so a creditor and debtor could keep an honest tally by notching transactions at the same time.
In sport, the side with the most scores or notches cut into a tally stick was the winner.
The outcome of a game is known as the “score”.
