the.com/putsch
A coup with a German accent and a tighter schedule.
means A sudden, often violent attempt by a small group to overthrow a government.
from Borrowed straight from Swiss-German dialect, where 'Putsch' meant a sudden knock, push, or shove. It entered political vocabulary after being used for an attempted uprising in Zurich in 1839, and the name stuck — later cemented in English usage by the failed 1923 Munich Putsch, which gave the word its lasting whiff of jackboots and bad timing.
- origin
- Swiss-German for sudden push or blow
- first famous use
- Hitler beer hall putsch, 1923, failed badly
- key trait
- fast, small-group, often military-backed takeover
- vs revolution
- no mass uprising, just a sharp shove