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 with those names like "Sarah" and "London" which have no lexical meaning of their own. In addition to the singular and plural reference (in many languages grammatically obvious), linguists typically distinguish individual or specific reference, exemplified by each case presented so far, from generic reference, where a singular expression picks out a type of object rather than an individual one, as in The bear is a dangerous animal". Plural expressions can, of course, be interpreted in the same way, as in Bears are dangerous animals". Definite reference to single individuals is usually taken to be the prototypical type of reference.