coupon

American  

[koo-pon, kyoo-] / ˈku pɒn, ˈkyu- /

noun

1. a portion of a certificate, ticket, label, advertisement, or the like, set off from the main body by dotted lines or the like to emphasize its separability, entitling the holder to something, as a gift or discount, or for use as an order blank, a contest entry form, etc.

2. a separate certificate, ticket, etc., for the same purpose.

3. Finance. one of a number of small detachable certificates calling for periodic interest payments on a bearer bond.

4. Metallurgy. a sample of metal or metalwork submitted to a customer or testing agency for approval.

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coupon British  

/ ˈkuːpɒn /

noun

1. 1. a detachable part of a ticket or advertisement entitling the holder to a discount, free gift, etc

   2. a detachable slip usable as a commercial order form

   3. a voucher given away with certain goods, a certain number of which are exchangeable for goods offered by the manufacturers

2. one of a number of detachable certificates attached to a bond, esp a bearer bond, the surrender of which entitles the bearer to receive interest payments

3. one of several detachable cards used for making hire-purchase payments

4. a ticket issued to facilitate rationing

5. a detachable entry form for any of certain competitions, esp football pools

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Pronunciation

Coupon, related to cope and coup, is of French origin. It has developed an American pronunciation variant with an unhistorical y -sound not justified by the spelling. This pronunciation is used by educated speakers and is well-established as perfectly standard, although it is sometimes criticized. Its development may have been encouraged by analogy with words like curious, cupid, and cute, where c is followed by a “long u ” and the is mandatory.

Other Word Forms

• couponless adjective

Etymology

Origin of coupon

1815–25; < French; Old French colpon piece cut off, equivalent to colp(er) to cut ( cope ¹ ) + -on noun suffix

Example Sentences

Net sales are sales minus returns and discounts, such as coupons.

From MarketWatch

When the seller of a century bond offers a historically low coupon then interesting things can happen.

From The Wall Street Journal

Sargent has said that Kroger’s strategy has been to try to hold off on passing food price increases to customers and is rolling out more promotions, including the return of paper coupons.

From The Wall Street Journal

From there, they either receive a coupon accepted at certain pharmacies or are routed directly to a drug manufacturer’s website to purchase the prescription.

From Los Angeles Times

Users can search for the medication they want, then print out a coupon and present it at a pharmacy to buy at the discounted price.

From Barron's

Related Words

• advertisement
• card
• certificate
• voucher