one fell swoop

EnglishEdit

WOTD – 29 March 2010

EtymologyEdit

After Shakespeare, in Macbeth, act iv, scene 3, where Macduff learns his wife and entire family are murdered:

Ro. Wife, Children, Servants, all that could be found. […]

Macd. […] All my pretty ones?
Did you say All? Oh Hell-Kite! All?
What, All my pretty Chickens, and their Damme
At one fell swoope?

The imagery is of a bird of prey ("hell-kite") ransacking a whole nest at one blow. In later uses of the expression, the force of the metaphor is reduced or lost.

PronunciationEdit

Audio (AU)
(file)

NounEdit

one fell swoop (uncountable)

(idiomatic) One stroke; one action or event achieves or accomplishes many results.
Changing the oil lubricates the engine and removes debris in one fell swoop.
- 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iv, scene 3:
  What, All my pretty Chickens, and their Damme
  At one fell ſwoope?
- 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare & Co.; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483:
  , Episode 16:
  ...they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.