Word.ws English Dictionary

at a single stroke

at a single stroke is the alternative form of at one stroke.

Meaning of at one stroke

Prepositional phrase

  1. (literal) With a single blow, effort, or act.
    • I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatly accomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in the rain.1895, Thomas Hardy, chapter 9, in Jude the Obscure
    Synonyms:
    in one fell swoop
  2. (broadly, figuratively) At once, immediately; in an instant.
    • [T]he whole object of the poem is to show what infinities of spiritual good and evil a current and sordid story may contain. When once this is realised, it explains at one stroke the innumerable facts about the work.1903, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 7, in Robert Browning
    Synonyms:
    all of a sudden, in one fell swoop, suddenly

Questions about at a single stroke

What is at a single stroke the alternative form of?
At a single stroke is the alternative form of at one stroke.

Words near at a single stroke in the dictionary

  1. at a price
  2. at a profit
  3. at a push
  4. at a rate of knots
  5. at a run
  6. at a single stroke
  7. at a stand
  8. at a stretch
  9. at a stroke
  10. at a time
  11. at a venture

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at a single stroke (page history and authors); at one stroke (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “at a single stroke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/at_a_single_stroke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.