- punch
- \ \ English has three distinct words punch, not counting the capitalized character in the Punch and Judy show, but two of them are probably ultimately related. Punch ‘hit’ [14] originated as a variant of Middle English pounce ‘pierce, prod’. This came from Old French poinsonner ‘prick, stamp’, a derivative of the noun poinson ‘pointed tool’ (source of the now obsolete English puncheon ‘pointed tool’ [14]).\ \ And poinson in turn came from Vulgar Latin *punctiō, a derivative of *punctiāre ‘pierce, prick’, which went back to the past participle of Latin pungere ‘prick’ (source of English point, punctuation, etc). Punch ‘tool for making holes’ [15] (as in ‘ticket punch’) probably originated as an abbreviated version of puncheon. Punch ‘drink’ [17] is said to come from Hindi pānch, a descendant of Sanskrit panchan ‘five’, an allusion to the fact that the drink is traditionally made from five ingredients: spirits, water, lemon juice, sugar, and spice. This has never been definitely established, however, and an alternative possibility is that it is an abbreviation of puncheon ‘barrel’ [15], a word of uncertain origin.\ \ The name of Mr Punch [17] is short for Punchinello, which comes from a Neapolitan dialect word polecenella. This may have been a diminutive of Italian polecena ‘young turkey’, which goes back ultimately to Latin pullus ‘young animal, young chicken’ (source of English poultry). It is presumably an allusion to Punch’s beaklike nose.\ \ Cf.⇒ POINT, PUNCTUATION
Word origins - 2ed. J. Ayto. 2005.
