Word Request – What Verb Goes with ‘Coup’?

verbsword-request

The coup was ______ in this country by the United States.

It was indeed United States that ______ the coup in this country.

If the problems take a turn to the worse, then the army would ______ a
coup.

I want a verb for the blanks. In the above contexts, the United States or the army are meant to be the main agency in doing the coup.

I thought about run/ran and set. Are these idiomatic suggestions? Any better suggestions?

Best Answer

You stage a coup, like the documentary How to Stage a Coup.

  1. to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect
    // stage a track meet
    // stage a hunger strike

(source: Merriam-Webster)

In cases like this, an NGram search is often helpful. (The * basically means "find the words most used at that position" and _VERB specifies you're only looking for verbs.) Here, we can see that stage is the most commonly used verb.

Of course, you do need to pay attention to what the words actually mean; other top hits like plan and attempt mean something else.

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