Cross cultural misunderstandings can be hilarious
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If you’re confused like me, a “punt” is a long, square, flat-bottomed boat used for navigating swamps and rivers, where the boat driver stands and pushes the bottom of the river with a long pole.
In this context, it likely means “ferrying.”
The fact that enough people assumed punt=kick without looking further into it kinda lends weight to the original point.
Until reading this post, I hadn’t really considered that people wouldn’t understand that.
Never heard punt used for anything else but kicking my entire life. Also with how randomly crazy everything is there, it seemed like a perfectly logical action based on their world.
It’s the pitfall of nearly every setting where “because magic” is a valid explanation for really anything.
When magic is shown to enable, say, telekinesis, the immediate logical conclusion is that the same method should apply to mundane transport of goods and people. Then when you see the same people using horses, cars, etc. it absolutely necessitates an exploration of the limits of the magic and why it works in one situation but not the other.
I always associated small flaf bottomed boats as being “shallows rafts” or “swamp boats” depending on context. Im from Southern California though, we dont have water.
Even if you’d never heard of the boat type, it seems easy enough to just assume from context that “punting” was some weird British-ism synonymous with ferrying, rather than Filch drop-kicking students.
Frankly speaking Filch drop-kicking students is entirely in character. Also us Americans will 100% accept weird shit if it doesnt try explaining itself. We have to exist within the same environment as opossum and racoon after all.
In character, sure, but physically improbable. Maybe Hagrid would’ve been big and strong enough to drop-kick teenagers dozens of feet across a swamp, but not Filch.
Honestly my reading was moreso that he was kicking them to get them to move across the swamp, like using a stick to herd animals.
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Ironically as a Canadian who had never run into this usage of punting I actually put it together thanks to my random knowledge of the Punt Gun, a massive single-shot shotgun from the Victorian era used to hunt entire flocks of waterfowl with one trigger pull. They were so large and powerful they couldn’t be safely used when held by a person, so you’d lie down in a boat and brace it against the boat (which I suppose is now termed the punt)
They were eventually shunned due to being considered unsporting (and decimating the local population of bird with ease.)
I learned the term from a dirty limerick in a sci-fi anthology about dinosaurs that I picked up in middle school at a school library book sale. It was told by a telepathic tree which was trying to convince a guy to jack off into a condom and shove an acorn in it so it could reproduce, as that’s how it had been created. It was weird.
I’ve read this comment four times and I still cannot believe all these words exist in this order.
It’s not that I doubt you – far from it – but you have to admit, when you say it out loud does it sound real?
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I was equally confused as a kid talking about how Harry and friends would have a row in the common room, and me trying to figure out why the hell do Wizards have boats inside.
To be fair, Hogwarts probably felt like a shit show for staff. Children are hard enough to deal with, I can’t imagine dealing with throngs of (largely wealthy and entitled) magic children. It’s pretty obvious that the only thing that kept Filch going was pure, unfiltered spite.
Filch got shat on by life, he’s a squib with no education to make it in the muggle world so they have him cleaning floors in a world where magic can do that easily. He’s not just a charity case but he knows he’s a charity case and that many wizards see him as lesser, but also that he has absoloutely no better options than his current situation.
A video essay I watched pointed out that Harry Potter’s chief conflict is between old conservatism (the good guys ™) and new conservatism (the bad guys ™), and I will never ever unsee it.
Uh no. The conflict would have been between old conservatism (pure blood rule) and new conservatism (include muggle born). It’s like one of the main topics of the story. The main baddies are declining aristocrats afraid of losing their position and power.
Also, he wishes he could torture kids for getting the floor dirty.
He was JKR’s self insert character
I refuse to believe JKR ever loved a cat.
She may have loved a cat, I don’t think she was ever loved by a cat.
Especially seeing how full of hate she is
It’s hard to imagine her loving anything other than herself
I refuse to believe JKR ever loved
a cat.Well her other self insert, Hermione, also had a cat, so things aren’t looking good for cat lovers.
the defence against the dark arts teacher literally turned a kid into a ferret and bounced him around the room…
Wasn’t he not only not the actual Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but also got in trouble for that? I mean, e en that was a step too far, it seems.
He wasn’t but I’d bet the actual moody would do that anyway.
Does punt mean kick in American or something then?
Yesssss…in American football, a punt is an action or a play that happens when a team is down to it’s last attempt to move the ball to a certain yard line. If they succeed, they earn more plays but if they fail, the opponent gains possession at the spot.
A punt is a special play where the possessing team drop kicks the ball, using their last play to give the ball to the other team, but the drop kick sends the ball a long distance down the field. A good punter is often capable of sending the ball 50+ yards down field, as well as gauging distance and direction so that the ball gets close to the end of the field without going over (which resets its location much closer to the starting point). While scoring points is obviously usually the better outcome, a good punter is invaluable to any team.
There’s a bit more to it, but that’s the gist.
Today I learnt.
As a Brit I never thought of anything other than one of these stupid posh kid boats
Because of the American football maneuver, you’ll also hear Americans using the term “punt” in other contexts as well, frequently in a business setting.
Because a punt in football is effectively saying, “Achieving success in the short term is impossible, impractical, or just too much of a hassle…so we’re going to forget pursuing it for now and we’ll try to score again later.”… you often hear things in a meeting at work where maybe there’s some sort of an opportunity that for whatever reason, the team or company isn’t ideally positioned to take advantage of, so they’ll say, “Ehhh, let’s punt on that issue.”
We also use it in gaming to say you made a silly mistake that costed you the victory.
You also punt in rugby.
Oh goodness, yes you do.
Well, it was under Umbridge so I’m sure she had 0 issues with Filch kicking the children and in fact found it hilariously delightful, even though that’s not what punting means in this context
I love a delayed release punchline* like this! Wasn’t until after the subsequent explanation in the comments that I remembered the other kind of punting and fully realized the insanity I had just accepted 😂
Another example of a delayed release punchline is my favorite Friends joke
*or kickline, if you prefer
