- a long shallow boat with a flat bottom and square ends which is moved by pushing the end of a long pole against the bottom of a riverTopics Transport by waterc2
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- (British English, informal) a bet
- The investment is little more than a punt.
- (in rugby or American football) a long kick made after dropping the ball from your handsTopics Sports: ball and racket sportsc2
- the former unit of money in the Republic of Ireland (replaced in 2002 by the euro)
Word Originnoun sense 1 Old English, from Latin ponto, denoting a flat-bottomed ferry boat; readopted in the early 16th cent. from Middle Low German punte or Middle Dutch ponte ‘ferry boat’, of the same origin. noun sense 3 mid 19th cent.: probably from dialect punt ‘push forcibly’. Compare with bunt.
Idioms
See punt in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarytake/have a punt (British English, informal)
- take/have a punt (on something/somebody) to choose something that involves some risk
- Our first impressions aren't great, but I'm willing to take a punt on it.
- Adventurous new investors might want to have a punt.
- take/have a punt (at something/doing something) to try to do something
- He took a punt at explaining why he'd done it.
Check pronunciation:
punt