Interesting question – it’s one of those colloquial usages I’ve never really stopped to consider.

My meaning is a slangy term for ‘customer’. It’s in common use on this side of the pond and doesn’t sit in any particular frame like marketing, but it is very informal. I had assumed it came from someone who placed a punt or bet, getting transferred to the more general sense of a person putting down money in return for something. Looking it up in my trusty OED2, I find it’s a bit more specific than this in its origins. It gives three general classes of the word, the first all to do with gambling origins, the second to do with the flat-bottomed boat, and the third to do with football – the latter is the newest class, and the former is the oldest, dating from about 1700. Within that first group of meanings are offered 5 definitions:
1. A player who ‘punts’ or plays against the bank at certain card-games: see punt v.1
2. transf. A small professional backer of horses. Also, one who gambles in stocks and shares, or on football pools.
3. slang. A name for a member of various classes of criminal, esp. one who assists in the commission of a crime (see quots.).
4. slang. The victim of a swindler or confidence trickster.
5. colloq. A customer or client; a member of an audience or spectator; spec., the client of a prostitute.
In some contexts almost synonymous with person (but depreciatory).

Under the verb punt it offers the detail of the specific games it derives from:

a. intr. At certain card-games, as basset, faro, and baccarat: To lay a stake against the bank.


I’ll go dig out the bit about the third type of punt, which seems marginally closer to your kind of ‘abandoning’ or kicking of something…


EDIT:
ah, having now checked the noun forms more carefully I can see the boat form is much older than I was suggesting above, going back to a Latinate root:

c1000 Ælfric's Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 166/2 Pontonium, punt. c1050 Suppl. Ælfric's Voc. ibid. 181/31 Pontonium, flyte. Caudex, punt.+ Trabaria, anbyme scip. a1100 Voc. ibid. 287/33 Pontonium, flyte. Trabaria, i. caudex, punt, i. pontonium. 1500, 1552 pontebots, etc. [see 3]. 1568 Withals Dict. 10a/2 Lintres sunt nauiculæ fluuiales, ex arbore cauata factæ, as puntes or troughes be. 1600 Holland Livy xxvi. ix. 589 Much ado he [Fulvius] had, for the great scarcitie of timber & wood, to make punts [rates] and boats for to set over his armie. 1603 I Plutarch's Mor. 1294 She searched for them in a bote or punt made of papyr reed [Žm baqidi paptqmg]. 1615 J. R. Trade's Incr. in Harl. Misc. (Malh.) III. 308 Fishing, which now we use in crayers and punts. etc

And in the gaming origin, it seems closely related to ‘point’:
2. In the game of faro: A point.
1850 Bohn's Handbk. Games 338 Terms used at Faro. Ponte or Punt, a Point. The punter or player.


Cites from OED2

Last edited by maverick; 01/31/06 03:08 PM.