Credit score

Etymology

"Credit" is from Latin "credere" (to trust); "score" is from Old Norse "skor" (a notch or tally, and also the number twenty). Debts were once tracked by cutting notches into a tally stick — literally keeping score. The modern credit score is that ancient running tally of trust, now computed by algorithm.

noun phrase · /KRED-it SKOR/
A number that summarizes how reliably a person has repaid debts, used by lenders to judge risk.
What it names
The single figure that quietly gates loans, apartments, and interest rates — a reputation for repayment compressed into three digits.
Example
Paying down her card balances lifted her credit score enough to qualify for a lower mortgage rate.
Related idea
Distinguish it from a credit report, the underlying detailed record of your accounts and payments; the score is a single number distilled from that report, and two lenders may compute slightly different scores from the same data.