Word.ws English Dictionary

one fell swoop

one fell swoop noun: one stroke; one action or event that achieves or accomplishes many results.

Noun

one fell swoop

  1. (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.
    • ...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., Episode 16

one fell swoop meaning in Tamil and Thai

one fell swoop in Tamil

ஒரே அடியில்

one fell swoop in Thai

one stroke; one action or event with many results
ในรวดเดียว

Origin of one fell swoop

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.

Questions about one fell swoop

What does one fell swoop mean?
One fell swoop means one stroke; one action or event that achieves or accomplishes many results.
What is one fell swoop in Tamil?
One fell swoop in Tamil is ஒரே அடியில். See One fell swoop meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is one fell swoop?
One fell swoop is a noun.

Words near one fell swoop in the dictionary

  1. one engine in steam
  2. one eyed jack
  3. one eyed jacks
  4. one fail swoop
  5. one fat lady
  6. one fell swoop
  7. one fifth
  8. one finger salute
  9. one finger saluted
  10. one finger salutes
  11. one finger saluting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one fell swoop (page history and authors); one fell swoop (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-one fell swoop.ogg.

Cite this entry: “one fell swoop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/one_fell_swoop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.