punter

punter

• Our choice of venue is usually the Mermaid Restaurant, where punters can dine al fresco at white plastic tables, rain or shine, in season or out —Daily Telegraph, 1992.

This meaning of punter, ‘a customer or client’, developed in the 1960s from an older meaning ‘a gambler; a backer of horses’, i.e. a customer of a bookmaker, by way of several underworld slang meanings including ‘an accomplice in a crime’, ‘a victim of a swindle’, and then ‘a client of a prostitute’. In the 1980s and 1990s it became a more salubrious vogue word, and even achieved enough respectability to be used in more highbrow contexts:

• For the punters, it may not be all bad: alternative bookings [at Covent Garden] could include leading foreign dance and opera companies —BBC Music Magazine, 1999.

Despite continued use, however, it is already beginning to sound like yesterday's buzzword:

• Its commitment to chuck around \#10 million behind marketing broadband is also sure to help it pick up punters —Register, 2002.

The older meanings continue to be used, as do two other words having the form punter: ‘someone who propels a punt on a river’ and ‘someone who punts a football’.