Coup de grâce - wikipedia Coup de grâce For other uses, see Coup de Grâce ( disambiguation ). This article is incomplete. Please help to improve it, or discuss the issue on the talk page. ( March 2015 ) 19th century painting of American Indian hunters wound a buffalo, and engage in a victory shout before administering their `` coup de grâce '' to the animal A coup de grâce ( / ˌkuː də ˈɡrɑːs / ; French ( ku də ɡʁɑs ) for `` blow of mercy '' ) is a death blow to end the suffering of a severely wounded person or animal. It may be a mercy killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the sufferer 's consent. Examples of coup de grâce include shooting the heart or head ( typically the back of the skull ) of a wounded, but still living, person during an execution or by humanely killing a suffering, mortally wounded soldier, in war, for whom medical aid is not available. Other examples include leading a firing squad administering a coup de grâce to the condemned with a pistol if the first hail of gunfire fails to kill the prisoner or a beheading to quickly end a samurai 's agony after seppuku. The phrase may also refer to the final event that causes a figurative death : The business had been struggling for years. The sharp jump in oil prices was the coup de grâce. The final / s / is sometimes omitted, a hyperforeignism. See also Euthanasia Animal euthanasia Misericorde References Jump up ^ Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries, eds. The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005. ISBN 978 - 0618604999 p. 119. ^ Jump up to : Charles Harrington Elster. The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations : The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker. 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. ISBN 978 - 0618423156 pp. 110 -- 111. External links The dictionary definition of coup de grâce at Wiktionary Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= Coup_de_grâce&oldid = 800352843 '' Categories : Euthanasia Hidden categories : Articles to be expanded from March 2015 Talk About Wikipedia Čeština Dansk Deutsch Français Italiano Nederlands Norsk Polski Português Tiếng Việt Edit links This page was last edited on 13 September 2017, at 00 : 44. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: what does coup de gras mean in english
Answer: blow of mercy