Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·French ·1640s
Coup
from coup
- Meaning
- A sudden, decisive stroke; a political overthrow (short for *coup d'état*).
- Source word
- coup
- Route into English
- French *coup* (blow, from Latin *colpus*) → English in several compounds (*coup de grâce*, *coup d'état*, *coup de théâtre*) → used alone. The bare-noun sense ("it was a coup to get him") is 20th-century.
- Arrived
- 1640s
From French
Beyond the Norman conquest's Old French foundation, English kept borrowing from French for art, cuisine, fashion, and diplomacy throughout the modern period.
English borrows.
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