Word.ws English Dictionary

in one stroke

in one 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 in one stroke

What is in one stroke the alternative form of?
In one stroke is the alternative form of at one stroke.

Words near in one stroke in the dictionary

  1. in one bite
  2. in one foul swoop
  3. in one go
  4. in one piece
  5. in one sitting
  6. in one stroke
  7. in one voice
  8. in one's altitudes
  9. in one's back pocket
  10. in one's backyard
  11. in one's bare skin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in one 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: “in one stroke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_one_stroke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.