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, fell meaning "terrible, cruel, savage." In later uses of the expression, the force of the metaphor is reduced or lost.

PronunciationEdit

Audio (AU)
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NounEdit

one fell swoop

(idiomatic) One stroke; one action or event that achieves or accomplishes many results.
Changing the oil lubricates the engine and removes debris in one fell swoop.
- 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, London: The Egoist Press, published 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.