Other forms: punctures, punctured, puncturing
A puncture is the small hole a nail or a thorn makes in a tyre, and the reason you are pushing your bike home. The hiss, the flat rim on the kerb, the inner tube held under water in a washing-up bowl while you look for the bubbles.
It works as a verb too: a nail punctures a tyre, and a broken rib can puncture a lung. Doctors use it plainly — a lumbar puncture is a needle drawn into the base of the spine — and writers borrow it, letting one flat sentence puncture somebody's confidence in front of a room. Americans say a flat, or a flat tire, where the British say a puncture. You get a puncture and then you mend it, and the little tin of glue and rubber patches is a puncture repair kit.
1nounpunctureA small hole made by something sharp, especially in a tyre, that lets the air out.~59%
“I got a puncture two miles from home.”
2verbpierceTo make a hole in something so that air or liquid escapes.~39%
“A nail had punctured the back tyre.”
synonyms: pierce
3verbspoilTo spoil somebody's confidence or good mood with a single remark.~2%
“One question from the back punctured his confidence completely.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 93 sentences found in the wild and placed 88 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
puncture is a hole.
Also accepted in games: flat tire, flat
Latin
punctūra
English, today
puncture
Borrowed from Latin punctūra.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA