The action punt, meaning to cancel, defer, or pass responsibility to, starts appearing in the 1970s as university student slang with the specific meaning of “drop a course so as not to fail it”. This is by analogy to the American football action, where you punt when you can no longer continue. The name of that action comes from the rugby action punt meaning “kick before it hits the ground”, first found in print in an 1845 rugby rulebook. The rugby term’s origin is unclear, possibly a variant of Midlands dialectal bunt “to push or headbutt”.

Confusingly, the term seems to be unrelated to the boat punt, which along with pontoon can be traced back to Latin pontō “ferryboat”, from Latin pōns “bridge”.