Etymology of Punch List

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Ahoy, this is Jim Markley from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Ahoy, Sailor, how you doing?

I’m doing great.

Welcome to the show, what’s up?

Well, I have a question. I’m an engineer, and when you’re doing big public works projects, big engineering projects, at the end of the project, there’s a list made of the final things that have to happen until the project’s completed. It’s called the punch list. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me why it’s called a punch list. I’m hoping you know.

So at the end of a project, you’ve got a bunch of things left to do. In my experience, a punch list is a corrective list. It’s the things that aren’t quite right, like you’re doing a home renovation and you’re working with the contractor. Look, the baseboard isn’t flush here, or that wall’s the wrong color, or you forgot to put an outlet on that wall. Is that how it works in the engineering field? No. It’s corrective stuff and things that just aren’t finished. It’s the last details.

Towards the end of the project, the contractor will say, you know, I need my punch list. I need my punch list. And when it’s down to its manageable size, the inspector will say, okay, and they’ll sit down and write out every single thing that needs to be done and give it to them in writing. In writing. And it’s kind of a checklist.

Right. When you do these things, it’s time to get paid.

That’s very interesting to me. I guess I’ve been using it wrong all this.

Well, or differently.

Yeah, differently. Engineering usage. I mean, the home reno usage that I know is always corrective. It’s not usually like the unfinished stuff. Or if it is unfinished stuff, it’s because that’s a corrective where they forgot to do it, and that’s why it’s unfinished, not because they just haven’t gotten to it yet.

Yeah, I guess I and other people I talk with use it just as a to-do list.

Oh, okay.

Just kind of generalize.

I can see generalizing that. Problem. Let’s put together a punch list. And in some ways, it’s like, I just want to punch it because I have all these things to do. Well, that’s interesting. Because Jim and Martha, I did an entry for this in my old dictionary website in 2004 in the double-tongued dictionary that I used to keep and has now been merged with the radio show website. But at the time, I did some digging in it and wasn’t really happy with what I found. I’ve looked into it since. And it turns out that you can find some uses of this term as far back as the 1930s and 1940s. It’s almost always a list of to-dos generally. Sometimes it’s a list of things that need to be remedied, like I was saying, a corrective list.

But there are two prevailing theories about why it’s called a punch list. And this is the part where you wanting to punch the list comes into play here. The first theory, which what it’s worth, suggests that apparently at some point there’s a tradition or habit of marking a page of things to do when they were done by hole punching them. So you have a list of things and you hole punch next to the things that are finished. Now, why there’d be a hole punch on a construction site or an engineering site, I don’t know. It’s not really standard fare.

There have been various cases in the legal world where you punch pages in a certain way to show that they belong together, or that you can match up the holes and da-da-da, or maybe even do like the notary, which is kind of a form of punching and different things like that, maybe. The theory that I like more, even though there’s also no evidence for this, is that instead of checking, you actually put a hole in the page with your pen next to the item to show it’s done. That way you’re not crossing it through to making it illegible, but you are indicating purposely that I’m putting a hole next to this thing because it is finished.

Oh, I just meant I want to punch it because it exists.

Oh, I see.

I’ve got all this work to do.

You can just throw it.

If it’s your list, you can just throw it out.

Well, those are much better theories than the one that I have.

What’s your theory?

Well, and I have no evidence at all, but I was wondering if it tied into like a time clock that you punch out.

Oh, that’s interesting.

So you put it in the machine to put a stamp at with a date and time, and that’s it.

Well, no, I was just thinking of a parallel.

Oh, I see.

You’re punching out of the project like you would a time clock.

Oh.

There are also—

Oh, I like it.

It doesn’t have any evidence either, but I like it. None of these really matter, but there’s a theory that I’ve come up with for what it’s worth, and I’ve seen this on some larger construction sites. When I was involved in information technology, we often managed facilities, and at least once we had to like renovate like four or five floors. And so the IT department was involved in wiring and directly involved in various facilities things. And I would see these contractors walking around with these big fat clipboards. And they have like the big arching metal loops on the top of it that you kind of pull them apart. And there’s a real chunking sound that they make when you close those things, a real kind of chunk. And it’s like a punch, you know.

And I don’t know. I was imagining that maybe you had a page that was a list of to-dos that didn’t have the holes pre-punched. And you just kind of force it with this big, sturdy clipboard. And we’re talking like it looks like a catalog. He’s got everything on this clipboard. And it’s like a big upside-down U-shaped kind of metal, what would you call those, binder rings, basically. Is this familiar to you? Do you have those on your worksites?

I’ve seen those, but not on worksites.

Okay.

Is this a national term or is it regional?

It’s national, yeah. It’s widely used and has been used in the construction world for, like I said, at least the 1930s.

That’s fascinating. And Martha’s usage very much conforms to the everyday usage for a lot of people, which is it’s like it’s not necessarily just your to-dos, but it’s like your high-priority to-dos. Like, you know, you need to go pick the kid up from school. That’s on the punch list, but maybe the laundry can wait.

Yeah, I have a sense when I make a punch list that it’s things that I want to have happen in rapid succession. You know, almost like Muhammad Ali, right punch, left punch.

So it’s your combination. It’s your footwork and your punching. Floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee.

So, Jim, I think we have like seven theories without evidence. I think this may be a record on our show.

I like them. It’s a good collection of possibilities.

Well, thank you very much. That’s a nice way to put it, a good collection of possibilities. There are other words for that kind of malarkey, but we won’t say those on the air.

Jim, thank you so much for your call. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. That was a lot of fun.

Yeah, take care.

All right. Thanks, Jim. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

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