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

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.

Last updated:

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