Talk:punter

Tea room discussion
From the Tea Room:

The fourth sense (regular customer of a drinking establishment) was added yesterday by an anon. I've rewritten it to be more Wiktionaric in style, but I'm not certain whether it is a separate sense to the previous one (customer, often used for the customer of a prostitute). Thryduulf 02:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It is actually much broader than that. It means a client of any commercial establishment. Particularly used in S.W. UK. The fact is, you are most likely to hear it used in a pub, but its use is in reality very wide-spread. -- Algrif 15:39, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I feel that it is redundant to sense 3 above. Conrad.Irwin 09:25, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think 3 and 4 should be combined.--Dmol 09:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

—Ruakh TALK 18:12, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Ordinary voters?
I'm not British, but I regularly read The Economist, and they seem to use "punters" to mean "ordinary voters" or "the masses" (as opposed to nobles or the wealthy, I suppose). Here's a recent example:


 * So one of their [the Tories] main jobs is to convince the punters that Mr Cameron leads a like-minded and reliable team. — Bagehot, "Dave and whose army?", The Economist, 10–16 October 2009, page 60

I deduce that this is based on the idea that voters are the "paying customers" of democracy, but it'd be nice to have an actual definition for this sense. I'd do it myself but I'm really not sure of my deduction. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a common usage in the UK but it's hard to define. The connection being that the "punters" are the general public who you might meet in a pub or at a race track. Sometimes the implication is also that they are ordinary, i.e. working class. I think it might be similar to the US usage of "Joe public". --86.149.68.194 15:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)