Coup de
COUP, n. I know, I know—sorry. Sometimes the news is just inescapable. But at least this word, which has been all over US politics twitter lately (and also, I assume, Peru politics twitter, though granted I don’t see much of that), is a fascinating one.
In English we mostly see the word “coup” as a shortening of the French phrase “coup d’état,” which is the removal of an existing government through illegitimate, sometimes violent means, in a single movement/stroke/blow/hit, which is what “coup” means in French. (A glance at French history makes clear why they needed a term for this. Which is not to say that the rest of the world never pulls this same bullshit. Au contraire, unfortunately.)
The Trésor de la langue française entry for “coup” is enormously long. Most of the definitions have something to do with suddenness, violence, collision, shock. “Coup” plays a part in many different expressions in French: tout à coup (suddenly), tout d’un coup (all at once), du coup (as a result/consequence), du premier coup (from the first).
Here is an abbreviated list of words that can follow “coup de” according to the TLF and off the top of my head. It’s in no particular order, and if I didn’t explain anything in parentheses, just assume it means movement/stroke/blow/hit with that implement or body part.
baïonnette / bayonet
baguette (magique) / wand (ie, a wave of)
balai / broom (figuratively, a mass firing/laying off of employees)
barre / literally a metal bar, I guess, but if you say “coup de barre” usually it means you’re tired (“I’m beat”?), but sometimes it means some kind of figurative turn, especially a sudden or hard one, which has to do with, like, steering a ship? I don’t know how boats work and I don’t intend to find out
bec / beak
canne / cane (caning, corporal punishment)
chapeau / hat (ie, a tip of the)
coude / elbow
chance / luck (stroke of luck, lucky break)
épaule / shoulder
poing / fist (ie, a punch)
pied / foot (ie, a kick)
épée / sword
genou / knee
griffe / claw
hache / ax
poignard / dagger (ie, a treacherous act, a stab in the back)
fouet / whip (a lash, but also more figuratively, a boost, something that invigorates)
patte / paw (figuratively, a sly insult)
dés / dice (a throw/roll of the dice)
cloche / bell (literal bell-ringing, not figurative bell-ringing, as far as I know)
basically any kind of firearm, in which case coup = shot
foudre / lightning (figuratively, love at first sight)
Lightning photo by Johannes Plenio, sourced from Unsplash
tête / head (a headbutt, also an impulse)
boule / ball (also a headbutt)
cœur / heart (an impulse, also a “fave,” in use on lots of social media apps)
langue / tongue (a snub, a dig)
main / hand (a helping hand)
This is not even getting into all the adjectives you can add (rude, etc). It’s a versatile word. No wonder we’ve adopted some terms into English, like “coup d’état” as mentioned above, and “coup de grâce” (final blow). Here’s hoping the current US administration will suffer the latter instead of bumbling their way through the former.
I’ve been rereading more than reading, but I did finish a couple of sweet, cozy small-r romance novels this week. Here they are, my coups de cœur:
A Taste of Her Own Medicine (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Tasha L. Harrison. Please don’t let the fact that I called this book “sweet” and “cozy” give you the impression that it’s not also hot as hell, because it’s all three. This book is about Sonja, a recently divorced forty-year-old mom who’s trying to strike out on her own and start a small business selling herbal lotions and potions inspired by her family’s Gullah heritage and her mom’s practice as a conjure woman. She takes a class on entrepreneurship and falls for her young instructor, Atlas. He adores her from the first moment. It’s so nice to see a May-December romance where the woman is the older one. This book has such a strong sense of place and community, focusing on the small town and its local businesses and farms and the families who run them. And it has such delightful supporting characters. I loved Sonja’s mom, sisters, and kids, and Atlas’s friends. This book includes queerness in a welcoming way, since two of Atlas’s close friends are queer women, and that always makes me really happy. Content warnings: sex, divorce.
The Love Study (cis m/genderqueer, both bi/pan/queer, contemporary) by Kris Ripper. This is such a wholesome book: lots of queer-friends-as-found-family and cooking for each other and working out what dating looks like for two anxious queer people and talking about feelings. Granted, the characters don’t get really good at that last one until the end. I enjoyed the premise of this book, which is that one character runs a Youtube channel where they give relationship advice and the other character agrees to go on the show and be set up on dates. Naturally, the two of them fall for each other. This book also made me smile from how silly it is sometimes. The sex scenes are closed door, which feels right for two characters who talk a lot about privacy and intimacy, but there is plenty of innuendo. Content warnings: anxiety/panic attacks, mentions of misgendering, mentions of queer- and transphobic family members.
And I read some good queer stuff on the internet this week:
Notes on dyke camp by Mikaella Clements, a fantastic 2018 essay that I just now got to, about Hayley Kiyoko and Kate McKinnon and a certain lesbian aesthetic, one that has a lot to do with cockiness and swagger and “showy gestures, a certain hunch of the shoulder, a crooked grin, a beckoning hand, exaggeration, over-amplification, studied disinterest in clothes and very keen interest in everything else. A walk that looks like a dance.”
Wife guy by Jude Ellison Sady Doyle, an essay about identity and transition and marriage
the weight of them by Noelle Stevenson, a comic about top surgery and gender feelings
See you next Sunday!
