Word.ws English Dictionary

at a stroke

at a 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 stroke

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

Words near at a stroke in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at a 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 stroke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/at_a_stroke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.