noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A coup d'état; an illegal effort to forcibly overthrow the current government.

   "Afterward, the ringleaders of the failed putsch were publicly executed."

2. 2
   a sudden and decisive change of government illegally or by force wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

coupcoupcoup d etatcoup d'etatcoup d'étatcoup d’ état

Example

More examples

"Wokeness is as real as the Doctors' Plot and the Röhm Putsch, and serves the same purpose."

Etymology

Borrowed from German Putsch, from Alemannic German Putsch (“knock, thrust, blow”), of imitative origin.

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