couped

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of coup.

   Note

   One regular -ed form serves both as the simple past (the cart couped) and as the participle after have. The spelling covers several meanings: tipping out a load, staging a coup, and, in Scotland and Northern England, bartering. The object usually tells them apart. A nation goes with the political meaning, and a cart or barrow with the tipping one. None of these is the clean-cut heraldic term.

2. 2
   adjective

   In heraldry, cut off cleanly with a straight edge (especially an animal's head or limb) as opposed to erased, which leaves a jagged, torn edge.

   Like the difference between a board sawn straight across and one snapped off by hand.

   The blazon described a couped boar's head argent on a field of gules.

   On the new arms the eagle's legs were drawn couped just above the talons.

   Oppositeerased

   Note

   A blazon term taken straight from French couper, "to cut". The cut is clean and straight, and that is what separates it from erased: an erased head shows a ragged, torn edge, as if pulled away. Choosing between the two is choosing how the severing looks, not what was severed. A couped eagle's leg and an erased one are the same leg, drawn differently.

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