Word.ws English Dictionary

coup-de-grace

coup-de-grace is the alternative spelling of coup de grâce.

Meaning of coup de grâce

Noun

coup de grâce (plural coups de grâce)

  1. A final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.
    • After we had row'd, or rather driven about a League and a Half, as we reckon'd it, a raging Wave, Mountain-like, came rolling a-ſtern of us, and plainly bad us expect the Coup-de-Grace.1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 50
  2. (broadly, figuratively) A remarkable finishing action.

Forms of coup-de-grace

pluralcoups-de-grace

Questions about coup-de-grace

What is coup-de-grace the alternative spelling of?
Coup-de-grace is the alternative spelling of coup de grâce.

Words near coup-de-grace in the dictionary

  1. coup de theatre
  2. coup de théâtre
  3. coup stick
  4. coup sticks
  5. coup Turc
  6. coup-de-grace
  7. coupage
  8. Coupar Angus
  9. coupe
  10. coupe utilities
  11. coupe utility

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coup-de-grace (page history and authors); coup de grâce (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “coup-de-grace.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coup-de-grace. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.