Names for the number 0 in English no authoritative evidence that there has ever been any such word in Scots in the first place. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the word "love" in English to mean "zero" was to define how a game was to be played, rather than the score in the game itself. Gambling games could be played for stakes (money) or "for love (of the game)", i.e. for zero stakes. The first such recorded usage quoted in the OED was in 1678. The shift in meaning from "zero stakes" to "zero score" is not an enormous conceptual leap, and
Yamb (game) Yamb (game) Yamb is a public domain dice game similar to Yacht and Yahtzee (trademarked by Hasbro in the United States). Yamb can be played solitaire or by any number of players. Players take turns rolling five dice. After each roll, the player chooses which dice to keep, and which to reroll. A player may reroll some or all of the dice up to two times on a turn. The player must put a score or zero into a score box each turn. The game ends when all score boxes are used. The player with the highest total score wins