I guess my family and I have never known neither the definition or the pronunciation of coup de grâce. I always pronounced it as coo - de - grah, but apparently it is coo - de - gras. But even worse, I have always thought it meant something like "the frosting on the cake." When we were young and opening Christmas presents, my mom would always say, "Here is your 'coup'", which was short for coup de grâce. I was about to use it the other day, but looked it up first, and it means, "An action or event that serves as the culmination of a bad or deteriorating situation." That is hardly the "frosting on the cake" of my Christmas presents!

I have always misunderstood the meaning! Ugh.

Literally it is the "grace blow", the killing blow that puts a dying animal or person out of their misery. So it is metaphorically whatever you do to end something that is bad.

One literal definitions us a "stroke of grace," which is closer to the meaning that I grew up with. Besides, sometimes the literal meanings of words or phrases aren't that related to what they mean now. Some of these are hilarious. I especially like strozzapreti which is literally "priest strangler," but now means a kind of pasta.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
One literal definitions us a "stroke of grace," which is closer to the meaning that I grew up with. Besides, sometimes the literal meanings of words or phrases aren't that related to what they mean now. Some of these are hilarious. I especially like strozzapreti which is literally "priest strangler," but now means a kind of pasta.

The misunderstanding is because it isn't stroke as in what you do to the hair of a loved one it's stroke as in what you do with a sword or a knife and it's grace in a religious sense of going to heaven. In other words killing the wounded animal... what a bullfighter does after he has finished tormenting the poor creature.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

quote:

coup de grâce

I worked with a couple of french once. We had a long discussion about how Anglophones mostly pronounce this phrase. Coup de gras would mean a "fat blow" (gras as in foie gras).

Very good, Z. Indiana has the town of Versailles, which local yokels call "Versails," and, there's Terra Hawt, and Noter Daym Universtiy. But then my own name got garbled in France from the original German, then further mispronounced in Britian, then transliterated, so who am I to count coup?

So I figured out my mistake, and I am a bit embarrassed. The "coup" my parents would refer to actually came from: coup d'état, and while it is often used with military overthrows, the dictionary did say that "coup" means "A brilliant, sudden and usually successful stroke or act." My mistake.

[On another front, a successful "stroke"? Being in health care of course I think of a stroke as a cerebral vascular accident or CVA. However, I suppose one to have a successful golf stroke. ]

I don't think that would be any better. A coup d'etat is literally a "blow of the state" or a "blow to the state" and refers only to a violent overthrow of the government by some political faction. What happened on January 6 last year was an example of a failed coup d'etat. I can't think of any other meaning of it, especially not anything with any kind of positive spin.

Incidentally I did find that coup de grace IS sometimes, though rarely, used (in my view erroneously) to just mean "the finishing touch" in things like "I'll just add a sprig of parsley to the casserole - voila, the coup de grace". This seems like the same misuse that you and your family made so you aren't alone in misunderstanding what it actually means.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
Very good, Z. Indiana has the town of Versailles, which local yokels call "Versails," and, there's Terra Hawt, and Noter Daym Universtiy. But then my own name got garbled in France from the original German, then further mispronounced in Britian, then transliterated, so who am I to count coup?

A rather unpleasant and officious French hotel manager (actually in Miami) insisted on referring to me and my friend whose name is Burgess as "Mr Heil and Mr Boo-hiss" when we had problems with his hotel. (Two of the lesser known Mr Men?)

Maybe it's just coup then. One meaning from the dictionary is: "a notable or successful stroke or move."

Here is one of the example sentences: "It was a major coup to get such a prestigious contract" This was just how my parents had used it."

who am I to count coup?

An interesting aside: I always wondered about German Putsch (which is from 'knock' in Swiss German. Then I remembered that 'a blow, strike' in Yiddish is potsh (פסטש). A calque?

It certainly looks like it to me. Is it the same in actual Hebrew?

Is it the same in actual Hebrew?

I don't think so. Although, Modern (Israeli) Hebrew may have borrowed the term (there are other Yiddishisms in Hebrew). But I think the "native" Hebrew term would be based on a Semitic root and not a Germanic one.