Coup de grâce


A coup de grâce is a death blow to end the suffering of a severely wounded person or animal. It may be a mercy killing of mortally wounded civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the sufferer's consent.
Examples of coup de grâce include shooting the heart or head 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. In pre-firearms eras the wounded were finished with edged or impact weapons to include cutting throats, blows to the head, and thrusts to the heart. Other examples include the officer 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 kaishakunin who performs 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.