Word.ws English Dictionary

coup de grâce

/kuː də ɡɹɑs/

coup de grâce noun: a final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.

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
    • The expression of his face was an appeal; his eyes were full of prayer. […] For what, indeed? For that which we accord to even the meanest creature without sense to demand it, denying it only to the wretched of our own race: for the blessed release, the rite of uttermost compassion, the coup de...1889, Ambrose Bierce, The Coup de Grâce
  2. (broadly, figuratively) A remarkable finishing action.

coup de grâce meaning in Sinhala and Thai

coup de grâce in Sinhala

final blow
මරු පහර maru pahara

coup de grâce in Thai

final blow
ตีครั้งสุดท้าย

Forms of coup de grâce

pluralcoups de grâce
alternative formcoup de grace
alternative formcoup-de-grace

Origin of coup de grâce

First use appears c. 1699. Borrowed from French coup de grâce (“finishing blow”). Originally referring to a merciful stroke putting a fatally wounded person out of misery or to the shot delivered to the head of a prisoner after facing a firing squad.

Questions about coup de grâce

What does coup de grâce mean?
Coup de grâce means a final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.
What is coup de grâce in Sinhala?
Coup de grâce in Sinhala is මරු පහර (maru pahara). See Coup de grâce meaning in Sinhala.
What part of speech is coup de grâce?
Coup de grâce is a noun.
How do you pronounce coup de grâce?
Coup de grâce is pronounced /kuː də ɡɹɑs/.
What is the plural of coup de grâce?
The plural of coup de grâce is coups de grâce.

Words near coup de grâce in the dictionary

  1. coup d'états
  2. coup d'œil
  3. coup de force
  4. coup de foudre
  5. coup de grace
  6. coup de grâce
  7. coup de main
  8. coup de maitre
  9. coup de savate
  10. coup de tat
  11. coup de theatre

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-coup de grâce.wav.

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