punchbag
punch·bag/ˈpʌnt͡ʃˌbæɡ/noun
punchbag is a noun meaning “A tough bag, usually cylindrical, filled with air, sand, or other material, and suspended so that swings freely, which is punched or kicked when…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-U-N-C-H-B-A-G and has 2 syllables (punch·bag), and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of punchbag is punchbags.
What does punchbag mean?
noun
- 1
UKA tough bag, usually cylindrical, filled with air, sand, or other material, and suspended so that swings freely, which is punched or kicked when practising sports such as boxing or martial arts.
- 2
UKA person serving as an object of abuse.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce punchbag?
- UK /ˈpʌnt͡ʃbæɡ/
- US /ˈpʌnt͡ʃˌbæɡ/
- US [ˈpən(t)ʃ-]
Punchbag has 2 syllables, split punch·bag in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of punchbag
- punchbags plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is punchbag?
Punchbag appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 167,786th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does punchbag come from?
From punch + bag.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).