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.
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 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.
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
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
