What does "contrecoup" mean?

A bruising of the brain caused by a blow, appearing on the opposite side to that on which the blow was struck.

What is a synonym for "contrecoup"?

Common synonyms include: backfire, backlash, boomerang, bounce, bound, carom.

Contrecoup

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A bruising of the brain caused by a blow, appearing on the opposite side to that on which the blow was struck.
"These injuries, known as contrecoup injuries, appear on the opposite side of the brain from the point of impact because the brain is flung against its own protective (or in this case not-so-protective) casing."

Synonyms

All synonyms

backfire backlash boomerang bounce bound carom

Example

More examples

"These injuries, known as contrecoup injuries, appear on the opposite side of the brain from the point of impact because the brain is flung against its own protective (or in this case not-so-protective) casing."

Etymology

Borrowed from French contrecoup, from contre (Latin contra) + coup a blow.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.