On a family trip to Cambridge last weekend we were accosted by a number of people selling trips on punts, small flat-bottomed boats similar to Venetian gondolas that are propelled by means of a long pole. It was remarked that maybe this could be the origin of the term punter in the sense of customer. Of course this is exactly the sort of thing that floats my linguistic boat...
A quick forage in the dictionary, however, reveals that, despite the similar spelling, the two words have entirely separate origins. A punt, referring to the boat, comes from the Latin ponto, which is where we also get the English word pontoon. In this sense a punter is someone who propels said vessel.
Yet punter as used in phrases like "this place draws in a lot of punters for the food" has its origins in gambling terminology. This comes from the French ponte which is a bet laid against a banker. Indeed the word punter is still very much used in the betting industry today: "Punter lands record jackpot".
Ramblings of a translator through languages and translation
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About Me
- Nicola Bottrell Hayward
- Brought up in the UK, I became passionate about languages when I was at school. Little did I know when I embarked on the language trail that it would take me through France, Germany, Belgium and even Russia. I had my first taste of the translation industry in 2001 and never looked back, setting up my own business as a freelance translator in 2007.
