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What happens with the game score when a player scores the first point in match. E.g. in a football match someone scores the first goal. The score became 1:0. What happened to the score? In Russia we say that “the score was opened” or “he opened the score”. What is the term for this in English?

I'm also interested in the opposite. What do you call the score 0:0 when no one has scored yet. The score is still ... or the score was not ... yet.

Mari-Lou A
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Kolyunya
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  • You can certainly say There's no score yet, but I don't think there's any natural English equivalent to the Russian version along the lines of The score has [verbed]. – FumbleFingers Nov 22 '15 at 18:51
  • Hi, I'm just going through posts which have "How do you call....?" in their questions or titles. See the discussion in this post: “How do we call (something) in English?” Would you mind editing yours to “What do you call the score....?” Thanks! – Mari-Lou A Mar 24 '16 at 20:38
  • Terms for relative sports scores definitely differ markedly between American and British English. For example, in British English, it's common to call a score of 0:0 "nil-nil", whereas Americans would more likely say something along the lines of "Both teams are tied at zero-zero". – Nick May 04 '16 at 22:36

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The phrase "opened the scoring" is a common way (in U.S. English) to express the idea of scoring first in a game. Two somewhat less common phrases are "broke the ice" and "drew first blood." And yet another wording occasionally used is "got on the board first," where "board" refers to "scoreboard." And finally, there is the rather prosaic "took the first lead."

The original 0-0 score is sometimes referred to as the "opening deadlock." But the most common way to refer to it is as "no score."

Sven Yargs
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