punt

英文词源

punt

punt: English has three separate words punt. The oldest is punt ‘flat-bottomed boat’ [15], which comes via Middle Low German punte or punto from Latin pontō, a term for a sort of Gaulish boat which also produced English pontoon. Punt ‘bet’ [18] (better known in the form of the agent noun punter ‘better’, hence ‘customer’) comes from French ponter, a derivative of ponte ‘bet against the banker in certain card games’.

This was adapted from Spanish punto ‘point’, a descendant of Latin punctum (source of English point). Punt ‘kick’ [19] may be a variant of bunt ‘push’ [19] (now used as a baseball term, meaning ‘hit the ball softly’); this could in turn be an alteration of butt, but it might also come from a Celtic source, related to Breton bounta ‘butt’.
=> pontoon; point, punctuation

punt (n.1)

"kick," 1845; see punt (v.).

punt (n.2)

"flat-bottomed river boat," late Old English punt, perhaps an ancient survival of British Latin ponto "flat-bottomed boat" (see OED), a kind of Gallic transport (Caesar), also "floating bridge" (Gellius), from Latin pontem (nominative pons) "bridge" (see pontoon). Or from or influenced by Old French cognate pont "large, flat boat."

punt (v.)

"to kick a ball dropped from the hands before it hits the ground," 1845, first in a Rugby list of football rules, perhaps from dialectal punt "to push, strike," alteration of Midlands dialect bunt "to push, butt with the head," of unknown origin, perhaps echoic. Student slang meaning "give up, drop a course so as not to fail," 1970s, is because a U.S. football team punts when it cannot advance the ball. Related: Punted; punting.