Coup de grâce Coup de grâce A coup de grâce (; French 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. In pre-firearms eras the wounded were finished with
Referring expression set individually. The difference may not be marked linguistically, but arrived at by interpretation in context. Compare "Manchester United won again today" (where the reference of "Manchester United" is to members of the team as a unit), with "Manchester United wear red shirts and black shorts" (where the reference of "Manchester United" is to the team members as individuals). English allows such expressions to be ambiguous: compare "Manchester United are rich beyond my wildest dreams." Denotation is the relation existing between a lexical item and a set of potential referents in some world. Reference is the relation between some expression