A few weeks ago, when the Egyptian military staged a coup to get rid of the government of Mohamed Morsi, a number of commentators became confused about the meaning of the expression ‘military coup’, denying that it was one. The thought process behind this strange denial seemed to be that as the coup had some sort of legitimacy in their eyes, it couldn’t really be a coup; military coups aren’t the sort of thing we (good people) approve of. It would be interesting to know if any of these same people now hesitate before the idea that what the Egyptian military and security apparatus have just carried out is a massacre. It could be this is a term whose meaning is less open to confusion.