Punching

How to spell punching

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce punching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does punching mean?

1. verbHitting someone or something with a closed fist.
2. verbPressing a tool through a material to make holes or stamp it.

Punching in a sentence

• He spent the afternoon punching the heavy bag at the gym.

• The machine is punching holes in the metal sheets all day.

• The boxer kept punching until the final bell rang.

• The conductor was punching tickets as passengers boarded.

Where does punching come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base verb 'punch' arrived in English in the late 1300s and most likely began as a shortened form of 'puncheon', which came through Old French ponchon from the Latin punctio, meaning 'a pricking' or 'a piercing', itself from pungere, 'to prick or pierce'. That sense of pressing a sharp point into a surface survives in the tool sense of punch, the device that presses or stamps holes. The meaning 'to strike with the fist' grew out of the same idea of a sudden, forceful jab and was common by the 1500s. The participle 'punching' simply adds the regular -ing ending, and because punch ends in a voiceless 'ch' there is no doubling of any letter, which keeps the spelling refreshingly straightforward. The Latin pungere also gave us 'puncture', 'pungent', and 'point', so the family is wide and the pricking idea runs through all of them.

How the word is built

• punch (to strike, or to pierce)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)