Other forms: punches, punched, punching
To punch is to hit with a closed fist — one fast, hard blow. A boxer punching a bag in the corner of the gym, a child punching a pillow, a whole stadium punching the air when the ball goes in.
Punch is the noun as well: he took one punch and sat down. A story or an advert packs a punch when it lands with real force, and the punch line is the last line of a joke, the part everything else was setting up. Then there is the other punch, the tool — the hole punch on the desk that bites two circles out of a sheet. You punch a hole in something, punch in a code, punch the clock at the start of a shift. And there is punch the drink, a bowl of fruit juice, wine and spice at a party, which shares nothing with the fist but its spelling. Mind the pattern: you punch somebody, and you punch a hole in something.
1verbpunchTo hit someone or something hard with your fist.~23%
“He punched the wall and broke a finger.”
2nounblowA hard blow with the fist.~20%
“She threw one punch and the fight was over.”
3verbholeTo make a hole in something with a tool or a machine.~39%
“The machine punches four holes in every sheet.”
4noundrinkA drink of fruit juice mixed with wine or spirits, served from a bowl.~18%
“There was a bowl of punch on the table by the door.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 149 sentences found in the wild and placed 60 of them on a sense (89 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
punch is a blow.
Latin pungō meant I prick, and gave Old French ponchon, a pointed tool — so the punch that makes holes is the older machine of the two. English then crossed it with punischen, to punish, and the fist came out of that mixture. The drink is unrelated: it comes from Hindi pānch, five, for the five things that went into the bowl — spirits, water, lemon, sugar and spice.
Proto-Indo-European
*pewǵ-
Latin
punctio
Old French
ponchonner — to punch
Middle English
punchen
English, today
punch
Built from
From Middle English punchen, partially from Old French ponchonner (“to punch”), from ponchon (“pointed tool”), from Latin punctio, from punctus, perfect passive participle of pungo (“I prick”); and partially from Middle English punchen, a syncopated variant of punischen "to punish"; see punish. Also influenced by Middle English punchon "a punch"; see puncheon. Compare also bunchen, bonchen (“to punch, deliver a blow, pound, beat”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA