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noun
Coup  n.  
1.
A sudden stroke delivered with promptness and force; used also in various ways to convey the idea of an unexpected, clever, and successful tactic or stratagem.
2.
A single roll of the wheel at roulette, or a deal at rouge et noir. (Cant)
3.
Among some tribes of North American Indians especially of the Great Plains, the act of striking or touching an enemy in warfare with the hand or at close quarters, as with a short stick, in such a manner as by custom to entitle the doer to count the deed an act of bravery; hence, any of various other deeds recognized by custom as acts of bravery or honor. "While the coup was primarily, and usually, a blow with something held in the hand, other acts in warfare which involved great danger to him who performed them were also reckoned coups by some tribes." "Among the Blackfeet the capture of a shield, bow, gun, war bonnet, war shirt, or medicine pipe was deemed a coup."
Coup de grace, the stroke of mercy with which an executioner ends by death the sufferings of the condemned; hence, a decisive, finishing stroke.
Coup de main (Mil.), a sudden and unexpected movement or attack.
Coup de soleil (Med.), a sunstroke. See Sunstroke.
Coup d'état (Politics), a sudden, decisive exercise of power whereby the existing government is subverted without the consent of the people; an unexpected measure of state, more or less violent; a stroke of policy.
Coup d'oeil.
(a)
A single view; a rapid glance of the eye; a comprehensive view of a scene; as much as can be seen at one view.
(b)
The general effect of a picture.
(c)
(Mil.) The faculty or the act of comprehending at a glance the weakness or strength of a military position, of a certain arrangement of troops, the most advantageous position for a battlefield, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coup" Quotes from Famous Books



... when they are forced to fight in that fashion they go into it with but one grim purpose—to kill, and to kill in the shortest possible space of time. Thus it was that Costigan's opening soon came. The pirate launched a particularly vicious kick, the dreaded "coup de sabot," which Costigan avoided by a lightning shift. It was a slight shift, barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two powerful hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap. Closed and twisted viciously, in the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... presents a charming coup d'oeil. The court which it encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of the monks. No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The graves are scarcely indicated by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... ony thing aboot me to produce ony doubt o' my ability or my secrecy?" answered Geordie. "Nae man will coup wi' Peter Finlayson in ony expedition whar death, danger, or exposure are to be avoided, or whar ability to plan, an' quickness to execute, and cunnin' to conceal, are things o' ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... heads, and fly away with the rest of the carcass—all agreeing to the very letter with what Henri Fabre tells us of a certain large wasp of Southern Europe, and how it captures the big 'taons' or horse-flies: 'Pour donner le coup de grâce à leurs Taons mal sacrifiés, et se débattants encore entre les pattes du ravisseur, j'ai vu des Bembex mâchonner la tête et le thorax des victimes.' Verily, there is nothing ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... the contrary, he was just the same as ever, and began talking at once about a grand coup he was going to make presently by investing in a silver-mine. He had two thousand dollars, and would buy shares at forty-nine, and be in time for the dividends of ten per cent. in July. The stock was going up ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... an instance of what the late W. C. Coup, of circus fame, once told him was one of the most amusing features of the show-business; the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... the Sound, where he was believed to be covered by the other troops. An attempt was made to surprise him in the night, by a detachment which should pass between him and the main body of the British army, and, by a coup de main, bear off his whole corps. Major Rogers was surprised, and about sixty of his regiment killed and taken. The loss of the Americans was only two killed, and eight or ten wounded; among the latter was Major ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... is not etiquette for the host to shoot; he must leave all the chances of glory to his guests. Among the treibers were various servants and chasseurs carrying extra guns and short daggers for the final despatch (le coup de grace). We heard them coming nearer and nearer, but we saw no boar. Many other animals came wonderingly forward: some foxes, trailing their long tails gracefully over the snow, looked about them and trotted off; a furtive deer cautiously peered around with ears erect and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... Nauwkeurige Versameling der gedenkwaardigste Zee- en Landreysen na Oost- en West-Indien, Mitsgaders andere Gewesten (Leiden, 1707). * S. d. B. Historie der Sevarambes...Twede druk. t'Amsterdam, By Willem de Coup (enz.). 1701. Het begin ende voortgangh der Vereenighde Nederlantsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie (II). Gedruckt in 1646. * BURNEY, Chronological history of the voyages and discoveries in the South Sea, Deel III (London, Luke Hansard, 1813). ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... course the student saw whole continents of study opened to him by the Kaiser's coup d'etat. Carefully as he had tried to follow the Kaiser's career, he had never suspected such refinement of policy, which raised his opinion of the Kaiser's ability to the highest point, and altogether upset the centre of statesmanship. That Germany could ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... ran whisky, it's mysel' wad soom! But we'll stan' while we can, an' be dancin' while we may, For there's twa we hae to finish, an' it's Hogmanay. Geordie Faa! Geordie Faa! There's an auld carle glow'rin' oot ahint yon wa', But we'll sune gar him loup to the pipin' till he coup, For we'll gi'e him just a drappie, ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob

... was not admitted to the secret councils of Augusta Goold and her friends. He knew no more than the general public what kind of a coup was meditated, but he gathered from Miss O'Dwyer's nervous excitement and Tim Halloran's air of immense and mysterious importance that something quite out of the common was likely to occur. By arriving an hour and a half before the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... discussed the details of the coup d'etat that was to overthrow the government of Pal-ul-don. One knew a slave who, as the signal sounded from the temple gong, would thrust a knife into the heart of Ko-tan, for the price of liberty. Another held personal ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... soupconner que le chateau de la comtesse d'Autreval recele un homme accuse de conspiration contre le roi? Du reste, que vos opinions politiques se rassurent...." (S'interrompant.) Est-ce que mon coeur a des opinions politiques?... (Reprenant.) "Henri n'est pas coupable; un malheureux coup de tete[16] qu'il vous racontera lui a seul donne une apparence de conspirateur; mais cette apparence suffirait mille fois pour le perdre, s'il etait pris. D'un autre cote, l'on assure qu'on ne veut pas pousser plus loin ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve

... madam," he resumed, "the boar led us a long way, but at last the hounds pulled him down, and his majesty himself gave the coup de grace. Well, then ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... striking a murderous blow at the heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all from a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood together on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing their coup-d'Etat to the king, while Catherine was ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... this wretched war will play the very deuce with our foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler, whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... is a dangerous dress wherever there is a chance of much perspiration, for it strikes cold upon the skin when it is wet. The terror of Swiss guides of the old school at a coup d'air on the mountain top, and of Italians at the chill of sundown, is largely due to their wearing linen shirts. Those who are dressed in flannel are far less sensitive ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... perpetuate a constitutional form of government, and this was accomplished by passing the famous statute known as the Bill of Rights. Experience had proved the vital importance of placing the privileges of the City of London beyond the caprice of the sovereign and the possibility of a coup d'etat. It was therefore declared by Parliament that the judgment passed on the quo warranto of Charles II. was unjust and illegal, and that all the proceedings in the case were informal and void. It was further enacted, "that the mayor, commonalty, and citizens, should for ever ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... coup d'etat, the victory being clinched before the opposition realized it. Ere the company had fairly recovered from their bewilderment, Budge Isham declared that the victory was really his, due to the good ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... thought to anything so personal as position or titles. This morning, however, time was found to send my name to the Minister of Foreign Affairs as "Attache Civil a l'Ambassade Americaine," and to request the customary "coup fil." ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... Lord Hood will not attempt a Scrutiny. One of Ld. Hood's votes was discovered to be a carrot-scraper in St. James's Market who sleeps in a little Kennel about the Size of a Hen Coup. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... Swedes were not so easily to be dispossessed. Three years later a new Swedish governor named Rising arrived in the river with a number of immigrants and soldiers. He sailed straight up to Fort Casimir, took it by surprise, and ejected the Dutch garrison of about a dozen men. As the successful coup occurred on Trinity Sunday, the Swedes renamed the place ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... when you depart from the ordinary established rules of play, with certain reasons for each special case. Do not hesitate when attempting a coup. Consider what the play of your adversaries means, as well as that ...
— The Laws of Euchre - As adopted by the Somerset Club of Boston, March 1, 1888 • H. C. Leeds

... assembled to hear him talk, by reading to them the inconsequent pages of Olympia, ou les Vengeances romaines; it is rich comedy, but the fragment carries us away, and at the beginning of page 209: "robe frola dans le silence. Tout a coup le cardinal Borborigano parut aux yeux de la duchesse————" we exclaim, don't we, with Bianchon: "Le cardinal Borborigano! Par les clefs du pape, si vous ne m'accordez pas qu'il se trouve une magnifique creation seulement dans le ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... was not feared of cold, his shirt being like a riddle, and his nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he was a brave lad; and sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking over sharp a turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was holding the post, was made to coup the creels, and got a bloody nose.—And but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he went; and up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not above ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... failure of the Allies to break through last year, the German higher command issued a paper, which has been printed in American newspapers, advocating "nibbling" tactics, instead of attempts to carry a strongly fortified line by a coup de main. The Germans have buoyed up their hopes by assuring each other that their troops have been making a slow but methodical progress toward the "fortress," according to program. But even if we grant that the disproportion ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... impassibly metallic voice of the banker, as he proclaims his "Rouge perd," or "Couleur gagne." People are too genteel at Hombourg-von-der-Hohe to scream, to yell, to fall into fainting fits, or go into convulsions, because they have lost four or five thousand francs or so in a single coup. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... in reach of its present situation; or because some other village has raided it, and taken away all the stuff it was saving to sell to the black trader; it resolves to give itself a final treat in the old home, and make a commercial coup at one fell swoop. Then when the black trader turns up with his boxes of goods, it kills him, has some for supper, smokes the rest, and takes it and the goods, and departs to found new homes in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... only gentleman whom I saw at Noirbourg who seemed really affected was a certain Count de Mustacheff, a Russian of enormous wealth, who clenched his fists, beat his breast, cursed his stars, and absolutely cried with grief: not for losing money, but for neglecting to win and play upon a coup de vingt, a series in which the red was turned up twenty times running: which series, had he but played, it is clear that he might have broken M. Lenoir's bank, and shut up the gambling-house, and doubled his own fortune—when he would have been no happier, and all the balls and music, all the newspaper-rooms ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... win it inch by inch, with the most laborious struggles, I all the while sorely complaining: till at length, with might and main, winding his way in, he got it completely home, and giving my virginity, as he thought, the coup le grace, furnished me with the cue of setting up a terrible outcry, whilst he, triumphant and like a cock clapping his wings over his down-trod mistress, pursued his pleasure: which presently rose, in virtue of this idea of a complete victory, to a pitch that made me soon sensible ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... confined to her bed) Page 53: Changed macron to aigu accent (employes attached) Page 53: Changed authorties to authorities (authorities wished) Page 54: Changed dimished to diminished (diminished all at once) Page 54: Changed a to a (tout a coup) Page 54: Changed entasses to entasses (crowded [entasses]) Page 54: Changed Franec to France (state like France) Page 56: Added missing end-quotes (to the Burraumposter.") Page 57: Changed em-dash to ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... schooner was shut in as completely as if she were in dry-dock with the gates closed at low tide. In truth it was but fair reprisal for the trick played on Leyden's vessel by Barry in Surabaya; but Jerry Rolfe had not been aware of that exploit, and this last coup was to him simply a piece of bald wickedness, swiftly ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... well, so far as our relations are concerned," Wingrave said coldly. "I did manage to make poor men of a few brokers in New York, but my best coup went wrong. That boy would have blown his brains out, I believe, if some meddling idiot hadn't found him all that money at the last moment. I have had a few smaller successes, of course, and there is this affair of Lady Ruth and her estimable husband. You know that he ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... tipped them off as to the value of the hidden cards. Plimsoll, with his ejection from Hereford, the advent of woman suffrage, the coming of Brandon and other irate horse owners, had begun to realize that his days were getting short in the land. He looked to the camp for a final coup. If he held the Casey claims and sold them, as he expected to do, to an eastern capitalist to whom he had telegraphed some days before, he might reestablish himself. Sandy's prompt arrival and subsequent events had crimped that plan and he fell back upon all the crooked tactics that he possessed ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... about the full of the moon, being invariably preceded by an unsteady motion of the mercury in the barometer. They are not always so violent as to be termed hurricanes: the last experienced before our visit was merely a coup de vent, by which ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... Sir Reginald, with a sneer; "there are so few men who have the art of losing with grace. We have no Stavordales now-a-days. The man who could win eleven thousand at a coup, and regret that he was not playing high, since in that case he would have won millions, is an ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... in a motor-car was greatest of all. He too was very proud of this last coup. He saw Ursula kindle and flare up to the romance of the situation. She raised her head like a young horse snuffing with ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... close to the boat. The boatman steps out on a rock with his gaff. Steadily now and slowly, lift the rod, bending it backward. A quick sure stroke of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore. How he flounces about on the stones. Give him the coup de grace at once, for his own sake as well as for ours. And now look at him, as he lies there on the green leaves. Broad back; small head tapering to a point; clean, shining sides with a few black spots on them; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea, in ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from. In fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be broken up by a coup d'etat. This was easily effected by redistributing the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the Duke of Anjou who told me,' said Gaspard. 'He was sitting at the foot of the Queen's bed when she settled it all with M. le Cardinal. They will send to have coup de main made of all those rogues as soon as the Te Deum is over tomorrow at Notre Dame, and then there will be no more refusing of money for M. le Prince to ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sur la Litterature du Second Empire Francais, depuis le Coup d'Etat du deux Decembre. Par William Reymond. Berlin: A. Charisius. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... instance adding that if "you are disposed to continue with me, I shall think myself too fortunate and happy to wish for a change." Yet Washington none the less sent Reed congratulations on his election to the Pennsylvania Assembly, "although I consider it the coup-de-grace to my ever seeing you" again a "member of my family," to help him he asked a friend to endeavor to get Reed legal business, and when all law business ceased and the would-be lawyer was without occupation or means of support, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... connoissoit egalement tous les secrets et les assaisonnemens. Il etoit redevable de sa faveur et de son elevation a Sigebritte (the well-known mistress of Christiern): elle l'avoit d'abord introduit a la cour pour lui servir d'espion: il passa ensuite tout d'un coup (here we must suspect some exaggeration), par le credit de cette femme, de la fonction de Barbier du Prince a la dignite d'Archeveque, et il se maintint dans sa faveur en presentant a Christierne des plaisirs qu'il savoit accommoder a son gout." ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: "J'ay veu le ministre et nostre cure s'entre battre e coup de poing sur le differend de la religion. Je ne scay pas qui estait le plus vaillant et qui donnait le meilleur coup; mais je scay tres bien que le ministre se plaignoit quelque fois au Sieur de Mons (Calviniste, directeur ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... of that first year when nothing mattered was gone for ever. She had two children, one of them uncommon, and they were to encounter life without name or property. True, Levine might die, or Hamilton make some brilliant coup, but she felt little of the buoyancy of hope as they left the cane-fields and drove among the dark hills to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... growing weaker and weaker, until at length objects commenced to blur before my eyes and I staggered and blundered about more asleep than awake, and then it was that he worked his pretty little coup that came near to losing ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... gentry and the capitalists, clearly failed in the psychological test at the critical time. This failure is amply attested by the manner in which they submitted practically without a fight after the Bolshevist coup d'etat. ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... ou Coup-d'Oeil Rapide sur mes differentes voyages et mon sejour dans la nation Creck, par Le Gal. Milfort, Tastanegy ou grand chef de guerre de la nation Creck et General de Brigade au service de la Republique Francaise." Paris, 1802. Writing in 1781, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... counting-house—humming a stave or two of 'Spanish Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a million to the depredator might have been made. 'Seems to me,' he would say almost wistfully, 'the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place since I quit.' By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus became known to ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... main souveraine L'a rendu d'un seul coup a la famille humaine. De ce premier bienfait, Sire, soyez content: L'Indien fera de vous MAXIMILIEN ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... sandstone-coloured church, late architecture, tower rather mouldering—all the more picturesque; churchyard, all white headstones and ochreous sheep, surmounted by a mushroom-shaped dark yew tree, railed in with intensely white rails, the whole glowing in the parting coup-de-soleil of a wet day, every tear of every leaf glistening, and everything indescribably lustrous. It is a picture that one's mental photograph ought to stamp for life, and the cheering and interest it gave, no one but you can understand. I wished for you, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... model of all that should be avoided in plastic or religious art. The screen which separates the choir from the transepts is equally unfortunate. The apsidal end of the Choir, however, with its fine modern stained glass, forms a very pleasing feature in the general coup d'oeil.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... The coup d'oeil of the Brussels opera-house did not strike Mrs. O'Dowd as being so fine as the theatre in Fishamble Street, Dublin, nor was French music at all equal, in her opinion, to the melodies of her native country. She favoured her friends with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to the depredator might have been made. "Seems to me," he would say almost wistfully, "the Street is getting to be a mighty dull place since I quit." By slow degrees this amiable weakness of the Colossus became ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... below his breath, and walked off. The shabby-looking passenger was pacing up and down the platform outside in a badly-made dust-coat. As they passed their lips moved. The Count's seemed to mutter, 'C'est un coup manque.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... was a further inspiration to the Governor. He swept details aside. He saw only the grand coup, the huge results, the East conquered, the march of empire rolling westward, finally arriving at its starting point, the vague, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... appearing to Jeanne d'Arc seems to have been modelled from a figurante at the opera. The visitor who has perused the opening chapters of this book will have no difficulty in following the subjects depicted on the walls. A more ambitious scheme of decoration was abruptly closed by the Coup d'Etat of Napoleon III.: Chenavard, who had been commissioned, in 1848, to decorate the interior by a series of forty cartoons, illustrating the "History of Man from his first sorrows to the French Revolution," found his gigantic project made ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... know all. That little coup of Tunbridge was played by the Aunt Bernstein with excellent skill. The old woman is the best man of our family. While you were arrested, your boxes were searched for the Mohock's letters to you. When you were let loose, the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rushed him for a couple of hundred yards, and then stopped. Hugh managed to eject the cartridge and load, and then cantered after the animal, which had started again at a sullen trot, with the blood pouring from its flank. As he galloped up to administer the "coup de grace," meaning to make no mistake about hitting the loin this time, the buffalo suddenly wheeled and charged him again, and Close Up executed another hurried retreat. For a while they took it up and down—first buffalo hunting man, then man hunting buffalo—while ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... COUP DE GRACE. The finishing shot which brings an enemy to surrender; or the wound which deprives an adversary ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... by one, unfolded them, and held them up for inspection. The king regarded each garment attentively and somewhat wonderingly as I held it up, but did not appear to be very profoundly impressed; and I began to fear that my great coup was about to miss fire. When, however, I came to the sword, drew it from its scabbard, flourished the glittering blade round my head, and made several cuts and points at an imaginary enemy, His Majesty sat upright in his chair and began to manifest ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... eprouver une vive admiration pour ce chercheur qui, sans autre appareil que la loupe, sans autre reaction que quelques essais pyrognostiques, plus rarement quelques mesures au goniometre, parvenait a discerner la nature des agregats mineralogiques les plue complexes et les plus varies. Ce coup d'oeil qui savait embrasser de si vastes horizons, penetre ici profondement tous les details lithologiques. Avec quelle surete et quelle exactitude la structure et la composition des roches ne sont'elles pas ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... the cutter, our party very imprudently bathed, which occasioned, to some of them, two or three days' indisposition, and it was fortunate that they did not suffer from a coup de soleil. This indiscretion was, however, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... a matter of history—that secret history of a nation which is often so much more intimate and interesting than its public chronicles—that Oberstein, eager to complete the coup of his lifetime, came to the lure and was safely engulfed for fifteen years in a British prison. In his trunk were found the invaluable Bruce-Partington plans, which he had put up for auction in all the naval centres ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle

... if the Confederates were very much discouraged by their recent reverses, such language from the Minister of a great European Power might be a knock-down blow ('Coup d'assommoir' was the expression he used) to them. It might induce them to come to terms with the North. At all events it might lead to an Armistice, under which trade might be immediately resumed. He had (he told me) mentioned to Mr. Seward his notion of using this language, and had ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. "UN COUP DE LANGUE," says the French proverb, "EST PIRE QU'UN COUP DE LANCE." The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it sometimes is to resist ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... the Stokes Mortar platoon under command of Lieutenant Robert A. Ward took position in the lines in the sub-sector Vaquois, and on August 4, 1918, took an active part in a coup-de-main arranged by the French. His mission, filling in the gaps in the French artillery barrage, was so successfully accomplished that his entire platoon was highly commended for their work by the commanding general of ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... Durrand has not yet informed them. Indeed she may have taken precautions against her informing them. A few bribes to the hospital attendants, carefully distributed, would be sufficient. It's not everyone who could, or would venture to, pull off the coup, but with Spencer the very daring of a thing adds to its ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... measure by a COUP DE MAIN in any one of the colonies, and bring it into working, the whole world would be the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... philosophical "coup" is a simple and effective one—the turning of everything, complacently and hilariously, upside down. One has the salutary amusement in reading him of visualizing the Universe in the posture of a Gargantuan baby, "prepared" for a sound smacking. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... champagne simply, instead of vin-de-champagne, which is de rigueur; not 'to turn up the cuffs of your coat when you carve,' eat your egg from the 'small end, or neglect to break it on your plate when emptied, with a coup de couteau; to cut, instead of break ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... this 'drome. The Count, left alone, will doubtless make his way into the woods bordering the field, where he will promptly be nabbed. That little drama should be taking place now. For your information, the credit for this coup goes to Lieutenant Siddons." ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... arrived behind the banker, leaning over his shoulder and watching him win an enormous coup.) Ah, ha! You see, Monsieur, I bring you good ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch

... but so steady was the fire directed, from the loopholes which commanded it, upon those so engaged, that they were, each time, forced to recoil with great slaughter. It was not until nearly daybreak that the attack ceased, and the assailants, finding that they could not carry the place by a coup de main, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... after to-morrow. Why do you call it the 'coup d'etat?' Oh! it will be very fine; all my best of everything—crystal, silver and gold, Sevres, flowers, music, and champagne to swim in. I'll let Leonce pay the bills. I wonder what he'll say when he ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... Jarvis, to whom he had committed himself, prompted him to a speedy declaration, and the unlucky conversation of Mr. Holt brought about a probable detection of his gaming propensities, the colonel determined to get rid of his awkward situation and his debts by a coup-de-main. He ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... de nos amours, Tu m'appartieus, nos coeurs sont unis pour toujours! Ah comprends-tu, dis moi, cette joie ternelle Des coeurs silencieux? Vivants, n'tre qu'une me, et du mme coup d'aile Nous lancer aux cieux! Laisse, laisse ma flamme Verser en toi le jour! Laisse clore ton me Aux ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach

... their backs on an enemy. They had run away once before on that very day. Avaux gives a very simple account of the defeat: "Ces mesmes dragons qui avoient fuy le matin lascherent le pied avec tout le reste de la cavalerie, sans tirer un coup de pistolet; et ils s'enfuidrent tous avec une telle epouvante qu'ils jetterent mousquetons, pistolets, et espees; et la plupart d'eux, ayant creve leurs chevaux, se deshabillerent pour ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... company, whose directors had all been selected for their religious bias rather than their business qualifications, burst at one fell coup, almost in the very hour of my return home, dissipating into thin air, as the Latin poet has it, all the savings of a lifetime which my mother had invested in the swindle—the provision left behind by my father, when he died, for her use, and the subsequent benefit of my sister and ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... direction should the bull take it into his head to charge toward them. It is not a bullfight. There are no picadors, armed with lances to prick the bull to madness; no banderilleros, with barbed darts; no heroic matador, ready with shining blade to give a mad and weary bull the coup de grace. Here all is fun and frolic. To be sure, the bull is duly annoyed by boastful boys or drunken Aymaras, who prod him with sticks and shake bright ponchos in his face until he dashes after his tormentors and causes a mighty scattering ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the defensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in his turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was called the "Coup ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... but in her heightened colour and sparkling eye Howard discerned a touch of happiness, and he enjoyed the quiet attention she gave to his needs. The Vicar seemed sorry that they had not made a closer inspection of the village. "But you were right to begin with a general coup d'oeil," he said; "the whole before the parts! First the conspectus, then the details," he added delightedly. "So you have been to the Isle of Thorns?" he went on. "I want to rake out the old fellow up there some day—but Cousin Anne won't allow it—you must persuade her; and we will have a ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... her. The child was brought up in our life; I figured on this coup for years, and finally when all was ready, we came back east again. I had a plan, but I wasn't quite sure it would work until I could see the two girls together. After that it was like taking candy from a kid. Hell, you are the only one who has ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... perceived in the aggression of the two northern lines a menace to its northwestern and Pacific coast connections. The Union Pacific leader, E. H. Harriman, resorted to an unexpected coup. He attempted to purchase the Northern Pacific, Burlington and all. A mysterious demand, set Northern Pacific shares soaring. The stock reached $1,000 a share and none was obtainable. Panic arose; bankers ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... far. She was on familiar terms with an English earl and two dukes; she had entertained an emperor aboard her yacht; in New York and Newport there were but two women to dispute her claims as social dictator, and one of these, through a railroad coup of her husband's, would soon be forced ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... abashed than was Anthony, who glanced through the window at the dreary prospect, looked back again, and found that the sharp eyes once more looked straight ahead without the slightest light of triumph in his coup. Silence, apparently, did not in the least ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... until she had secured that way. And she had the opportunity opening to her. Gaga had shown her as much. With the vehement exaggeration of youth that is still half-childhood, Sally saw her own genius. She felt that the world was already in her grasp. She felt like a financier before a coup. She felt like a commander who sees the enemy waver. For this night triumph seemed at hand, through some means which the heat of her brain did not allow her to analyse, but ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... est absolument degarnie d'arbres, on y voit d'un coup-d'oeil les progres de l'action des eaux. Des sillons a peine visibles dans le haut, s'elargissent et s'approfondissent graduellement vers le bas, ou ils forment enfin des ravines profondes, que l'on pourrait ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... cut around them, the dust spurting sidewise. The crowd gasped, for as he passed the bays it was impossible to judge his speed accurately; and after the breath of astonishment the cheers broke in a wave. There was a confusion of emotion in Marianne. A victory for the chestnut would be a coup for her pocketbook when it came to buying the Coles horses, but it would be a distinct blow to her pride as a horsewoman. Moreover, there was that in the stallion which roused instinctive aversion. Hatred for ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... one to him—and the fools who withheld him riches must be punished for their niggard hand. For a while a theft here and there, a cunning extortion of money upon the promise of good works, sufficed for his necessities, but still he hungered for a coup, and patiently he devised and ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... way you can beat the game in the long run if you keep at it," he answered simply. "It is mathematically impossible. Consider. We are Croesuses—we hire players to stake money for us on every possible number at every coup. How do we come out? If there are no '0' or '00,' we come out after each coup precisely where we started—we are paying our own money back and forth among ourselves; we have neither more nor less. But with the '0' and '00' the bank ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... la tache que Froebel remet, en grande partie, aux jardins d'enfants et a sa directrice. A l'egard des rapports de l'education domestique, telle qui elle est a l'heure qu'il est, on doit reconnaitre que Froebel avait un coup-d'oeil plus juste que Pestalozzi.—Histoire d'Education, FREDERICK DITTES, Redolfi's French translation, Paris, 1880, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... he always experienced in the face of danger. But there was no cause for his agitation; the husband, as commander of the district where Nekhludoff's estates were situated, informed the latter of a special meeting of the local governing body, and asked him to be present without fail, and donner un coup d'epaule in the important measures to be submitted concerning the schools and roads, and that the reactionary party was expected to offer ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... behind him a reputation for power unequaled by any man of that age. His property amounted to more than ten thousand myriads, and cities and kings were dependent upon him. Even when he was on the point of being slain, he managed to execute a brilliant coup. He had charge of the correspondence of Claudius and had in his possession letters containing secret information against Agrippina and others: all of these he burned ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... joke," returned Thrush, and drank deep while his client sipped. "If it had come off it would have been the coup of my career; as it didn't—quite—one must laugh it off at one's own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... the high chancellor laughed contemptuously at this narrative, and declared it to be only a coup de theatre. Suddenly an equipage drove to the door. Somewhat curious, Madame Cocceji stepped to the window; she saw that the coachman and footmen were dressed in liveries glittering with gold, and that the panels of the carriage were ornamented ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... that we have had, we whom age and experience have formed. We keep their imagination prisoner, we deprive them of the sight of objects by which nature gives to the savage his first notions of all things, of all the sciences even. We have not the coup-d'oeil of nature. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... could not possible be supposed. So bold an adventurer, so keen an intriguer was sure to have scented the trap immediately, and if he appeared ready to fall into it, it was because there had already sprung up in his resourceful mind some bold coup or subtle counterplan, with which he hoped to gratify his own passionate love of sport, whilst once more bringing his enemies ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... be justified in assuming that the churches, like theatre matinees, were kept up for the benefit of women and children. So far as present indications go, it seems not unlikely that science will deliver the coup de grace to organized Christianity within the next ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... "Le troisieme coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez-y encore, a ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... That, too, was all in his favour. Beaufoy was one of the younger men and not at all in the King's confidence. If Louis had any sinister coup in his mind, Leslie, or Saint-Pierre, or Lessaix himself would have been ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... Sixteenth Amendment were received from twenty-six different States, aggregating over 10,000 names. The History says: "To Sara Andrews Spencer we are indebted for the great labor of receiving, assorting, counting, rolling-up and planning the presentation of the petitions. It was by a well-considered coup d'etat that, with her brave coadjutors, she appeared on the floor of the House and gave each member a petition from his own State. Even Miss Anthony, always calm in the hour of danger, on finding herself suddenly ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... could see very little hope. His risk was enormous. He felt that the probability was that this raiding gang were well enough posted as to the store of gold he held in his cellars. He felt that, should James or any of his people decide upon a coup, the attack would be well timed, when the miners were out at their work, and he and the camp generally were ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... as you can:' which the other did. And when he came to 'tout est perdu' she sang it over twice; then turning to the other side of the couch, she said to those who stood around: 'Tout est perdu a ce coup et a bon escient;' all is lost this ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... revocable, and their holders were obliged to go weekly to ask for their renewal at the central police-office. It is not surprising, therefore, that so few of the fugitives should have remained in Belgium. Seven thousand took refuge there after the coup d'etat, but only two hundred and fifty took up their abode on Belgian soil. Yet Brussels remained, in some sense, the continental head-quarters of Victor Hugo, though never kindly or generous in her treatment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly throttled by Radicals. Mr. Gresham would thank his stars that he could still preserve foxes down in his own country, instead of doing any of this dirty work,—for let the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... the success at Oyster River, "is of great advantage, because it breaks off all the talk of peace between our Indians and the English. The English are in despair, for not even infants in the cradle were spared." [Footnote: "Ce coup est tres avantageux, parcequ'il rompte tous les pour-parlers de paix entre nos sauvages et les Anglois. Les Anglois sont au desespoir de ce qu'ils ont tue jusqu'aux enfants au berceau." Villebon ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... obey, monsieur, since I don't command. What would be the use? It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete. She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it. As a child—when I was happy, or supposed I was—she studied drawing and painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a talent. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into ...
— The American • Henry James

... then lived at Clagny, and most of his officers belonged to our society. Shall I mention it to my shame? I profited quickly by my instructor's tuition. I acquired an amazing facility in sleight of hand tricks, and learned in perfection to sauter le coup; with the help of a pair of long ruffles, I shuffled so adroitly as to defy the quickest observer, and I ruined several fair players. My unrivalled skill so quickened the progress of my fortunes, that I found myself master, in a few weeks, ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... detective grows up in an atmosphere of business. Romance, adventure are incidental—and rare. Before he can bring off any big coup he has thoroughly to understand the handling of the big machine of which he forms part. And above all he must have courage—not merely physical courage, but a courage that will assume big responsibility ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... Smith, "but not on the proceeds of this coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return this packet to its rightful owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. And what do ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... magnificent coup had already reached London, and the reply had come back terse and to ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... rewarded with the equivalent of days and nights of honest labor will surely be convinced thereafter of the superiority of theft over toil as a means of money-getting. Invariably the manufacturer of "made dollars," after his first coup, forsakes forever after the cold arithmetic of commerce for the rule of guess, dream, hope, and "I will," which constitutes the mathematics of high finance. Addicks' first "made dollars" came with such magical ease that there awoke in his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... officers—Halleck, Grant, and others—the cutting in two of the Confederacy by way of the Tennessee river by means of the gunboats, and of our facilities of thus concentrating troops and supplies. It was the great strategical coup of ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... Auntie," replied his friend, and applied himself to his fiancee's pretty upturned mouth. This the chum promptly did, following up the coup, amid hysterical laughter and face-slapping, by swiftly embracing the mother ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... against a petty officer on the frontier. That shot echoes on the Plains of Abraham, at Lexington and Bunker's Hill, at the taking of the Bastille, and with the "whiff of grape-shot"; we may hear it at Waterloo and in the autumn horrors of the Coup d'Etat. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... a distance from the original injury. I take it that the latter is to be explained by the early date of the suppuration, and the fact that in the great majority of small-calibre wounds the exit opening exists in the situation of the contre-coup damages ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... supposed, Professor Ruggles was deeply stunned at the coup de main that had deprived him of ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... inclined towards peace; but on the morrow a revolution took place at Constantinople, the Ministry of Kiamil Pacha being ousted by the warlike faction of Enver Bey. He, one of the contrivers of the revolution of July 1908, had since been attached to the Turkish Embassy at Berlin; and his successful coup was a triumph of German influence. The Peace Conference at London broke up on February 1. In March the Greeks and Bulgars captured Janina and Adrianople respectively, while Scutari fell to the Montenegrins (April 22). The Powers (Russia included) demanded ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... and you couldn't get a place, come ever so early. Then Honeyman was spoilt, and gave his sermons over and over again. People got sick of seeing the old humbug cry, the old crocodile! Then we tried the musical dodge. F. B. came forward, sir, there. That was a coup: I did it, sir. Bellew wouldn't have sung for any man but me—and for two-and-twenty months I kept him as sober as Father Mathew. Then Honeyman didn't pay him: there was a row in the sacred building, and Bellew retired. Then Sherrick must meddle in it. And having heard a chap ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... France," said the High Treasurer, "meant to make a master-stroke—a coup de maistre—but he who would have all may easily lose all. Such projects as these should not have been formed or taken in hand without previous communication with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... we come across British supporters of and sympathisers with the Russian Bolsheviks who take the name as a proof that the Government of Lenin and Trotzky actually represents the majority of the Russian people! Nothing is more contrary to the fact. The Bolshevist "coup de rue" of November, 1917, was as complete a usurpation of power as that of Louis Napoleon in 1851. True it was a usurpation by professed Socialists, supposedly in the interests of the Russian working class, but it was no less a usurpation and an attack on ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee

... aristocracy; and when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... general Progress of man. "The present is one of those great periods of history to which posterity will often look back" with gratitude. [Footnote: Picavet, Les Ideologues, p. 203. Cabanis was born in 1757 and died in 1808.] He took an active part in the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire (1799) which was to lead to the despotism of Napoleon. He imagined that it would terminate oppression, and was as enthusiastic for it as he and Condorcet had been for the Revolution ten years before. "You philosophers," he wrote, [Footnote: Ib. p. 224.] ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... a military hospital. She inspired confidence, not because she had initiative, but because one knew she would do exactly as she was told, which is, in itself, a great quality. At Boulogne she made the acquaintance at once of Aylmer, and of the coup de foudre. She worshipped him at first sight. So she thought herself fortunate when she was allowed to come back to London with him. Under orders she continued her assiduous attention. Everyone said she was ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... take place on the 2d Brumaire. On that day he was to be arrested, and accused of having premeditated a coup d'etat against the Directory. Indeed, one M. de Mounier had come to Director Gohier and had denounced Bonaparte, whom he positively knew was conspiring to destroy the existing government. Gohier received these accusations with much gravity, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... he would run for the office of county attorney if they so wished it. At the same time he broke to them the news of his engagement. The veterans exchanged sly glances and laughed delightedly. Little did the young man dream that they had planned this political coup for the sole purpose of bringing to the county the person they considered the most suitable as a husband for ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... was civil to me at the start, when you knew nothing whatever about my scheme, and you are the man who was good to me later on, when I didn't know where to turn for a friendly word. Very well; here I am! I've made my coup! And I'd be a sweep, wouldn't I? to forget to-day what I was so glad to remember a week ago. But you see, I don't forget! The capital of the Company is 500,000 pounds, all in pound shares. We offered the public only a fifth of them. The other four hundred thousand shares ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... last (O LE BEAU COUP D'ETAT)! exclaims Jordan,—though it is not clever or the contrary, not being dramatically prearranged, as Jordan exults to think. Jordan, though there are dregs of old devotion lying asleep in him, which will start into new activity ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... next station? You know that this circumstance occurred in France a few months since. If we have travelled in France this autumn we may have met the ingenious gentleman who perpetrated this daring and successful coup. We may have found him a well-informed and agreeable man. I have been acquainted with two or three gentlemen who have been discovered after—after the performance of illegal actions. What? That agreeable rattling fellow we met was the celebrated Mr. John Sheppard? Was that amiable quiet ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the Congressional Committee on Copyright in Washington. Nothing could have been more dramatic than the gesture with which he flung off his long, loose overcoat and stood forth in white from his feet to the crown of his silvery head. It was a magnificent coup, and he dearly loved a coup; but the magnificent speech which he made, tearing to shreds the venerable farrago of nonsense about nonproperty in ideas which had formed the basis of all copyright legislation, made you forget ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... steps to protect British interests. On arrival at the Ruo, Major Serpa Pinto returned to Mozambique for instructions, and in his absence Lieutenant Coutinho crossed the river, attacked the Makololo chiefs and sought to obtain possession of the Shire highlands by a coup de main. John Buchanan, the British vice-consul, lost no time in declaring the country under British protection, and his action was subsequently confirmed by Johnston on his return from a treaty-making expedition on Lake Nyasa. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... justice and sense of humour enough not to flatter one class at the expense of the rest, and who elsewhere (in the "Manciples Tale") very forcibly puts the truth that what in a great man is called a coup d'etat is called by a much simpler name in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... they still remained very healthy; and the only instance where the climate was at all prejudicial (if such a term can be applied) was in the Victoria River, on the north coast, where the heat was, at one period, very great, and the unavoidable exposure caused two of the crew to be attacked with Coup de Soleil. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... hammer blows on the enemy's lines the French had been preparing another coup, which was carried out on May 4, 1917. By this operation they captured the village of Craonne on the Soissons-Rheims front, several fortified points north and east of the village, and German first-line positions on a front of about ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... following Quimbleton's coup Chuff was in seclusion. It was rumored that he was ill; it was rumored that the sounds of breaking furniture had been heard by the neighbors on Caraway Street. But at any rate the Bishop lived up to his word. Orders over his signature went to Congress, and vast sums of money were appropriated ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... friends with designs on your jewels thoughtfully wait before they strike till I am able to be up and about, consequently in a position to be accused of a crime which no one would put past the Lone Wolf. Oh, I think we can fairly count Mr. Monk and his friends in on this coup!" ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... he shot one of these male goats, which was poised on so precipitous a point that it fell over and over down the mountain side and was lost as a trophy and as camp meat. Humiliating as such an episode may be, it serves, however, to add a coup to the archer's count. And there ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... came, told the adventure of Denys and Gerard at the inn in Domfront, and so well, that the hearers were rapt into sweet oblivion of the very existence of mijauree and hands. But this made her very uneasy, and she had recourse to her grand coup. This misdirected genius had for a twelvemonth past practised yawning, and could do it now at any moment so naturally as to set all creation gaping, could all creation have seen her. By this means she got in all her charms. For first ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... it was an incident without a moral. Yet it had one touch characteristic of the period which I like to remember. The man who had spoken to me, I think, suddenly realized, at the moment of my disastrous coup, the fact of my extreme youth. He moved toward the banker, and leaning over him whispered a few words. The banker looked up, half impatiently, half kindly—his hand straying tentatively toward the pile of coin. I instinctively knew what he meant, and, summoning my determination, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... has made what prairie men call a "coup." On counting the corpses of their slain enemies they find that at least one-half of the Tenawa warriors have fallen, including their chief. They can make an approximate estimate of the number that was opposed ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... Bastille, it was discovered that a plot was forming, at the head of which was the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for demolishing the National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby crushing, by a coup de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a free government. For the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this plan did not succeed. Examples are not wanting to show how dreadfully vindictive and cruel ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... first outrageous error to a slight extent by killing the Turkish colonel's orderly, missing the commander himself by almost a yard. My five men all missed with their second shots, and then it was too late to pull off the complete coup we had dared to hope for. The entire staff took cover, and started a veritable hail of fire with their repeating pistols, all aimed at us, and aimed as wildly as our ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... Fate never planned a coup so successfully. The psychology of Blake's arrival was perfect. The boxers of Carnation Hall had worked themselves into a mental condition which I knew was as ridiculous as it was dangerous. Their conceit and their imagination ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... caused a murmur of surprise, which did not prevent her from accomplishing the change by rolling hastily to the side of the easel the stool, the box of colors, and even the picture by Prudhon, which the absent pupil was copying. After this coup d'etat the Right began to work in silence, but the Left discoursed ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... This was the COUP DE GRACE. Otto had now to comfort and compose her as he could, and before many words, the money was accepted. Between the woman and the weak man such was the inevitable end. Madame von Rosen instantly composed her sobs. She thanked him with a fluttering voice, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... being is formed at a stroke ('tout d'un coup') as a whole, instantaneously; it is not formed part by part, and at different times. It is formed at once at the single 'individual' moment at which the conjunction of the male and female elements ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... a panic. It seemed that Anibal Alfarez was by no means so well reconciled to the death of his political hopes as had been supposed. On the contrary, in spite of all that had been done to prevent it, he had been working secretly and had perfected the preliminaries of a coup which he intended to spring at the eleventh hour. Through Ramon, he had brought about an alliance with the outgoing Galleo, and intended to make the bitterest possible fight against Garavel. Such joining of forces meant serious trouble, and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... of political and industrial chaos in Russia followed the Lenine coup d' etat, which was a triumph, probably temporary, of extremists. A number of the commissioners appointed by the Lenine-Trotzky faction to carry on the government, gave up their posts within a few ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... sociale et le coup d'Etat, (Ernest Flammarion, Paris); Goldman, Minorities versus Majorities, in Anarchism and Other Essays; and Kropotkin, Les Minorites Revolutionnaires, in Paroles ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... feature, the boldness of the conception, and the secrecy and promptitude with which so extensive an operation was effected, than by the physical difficulties that were overcome. In the latter particular, the passage of St. Bernard, as this celebrated coup-de-main is usually called, has frequently been outdone in our own wilds; for armies have often traversed regions of broad streams, broken mountains, and uninterrupted forests, for weeks at a time, in which the mere bodily labor of any given number of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... whereas du Bousquier, who entered the lists soon after his rejection by the most distinguished family in the place, had been refused. But the chevalier believed that his rival had still such strong chances of success that he dealt him this coup de Jarnac with a blade (namely, Suzanne) that was finely tempered for the purpose. The chevalier had cast his plummet-line into the waters of du Bousquier; and, as we shall see by the sequel, he was not mistaken in any ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... British youth, loves some kind of manly sport. Cricket he could no longer play for want of good and level ground, but then there was another game which, at least, could be played or learned under easy circumstances, even on a quiet street or big "free coup," and that was Association football. They soon took to it kindly, and many of them struggled hard and procured a ground. Not one, of course, like that on which they used to have their cricket matches long ago, but one on which Farmer Lyon grazed his cows and sheep, and ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... speaks quite casually and familiarly of WINSTON and what WINSTON said yesterday, for he often has the latest Admiralty news too. It was he who had the luck to be in the passage when Lord FISHER and another Sea Lord executed their historic waltz on the receipt of the news of STURDEE'S coup. I don't pretend that he is always as worthy of credence as he was then; for he has spread some false rumours too. He was, in fact, one of the busiest eye-witnesses (once or twice removed) of the triumphant progress of millions of Russians through Scotland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various



Words linked to "Coup" :   putsch, coup de grace, coup de main, coup de theatre, coup d'etat, group action, Russian Revolution, October Revolution, countercoup, success, coup d'oeil, takeover



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