Grammar Punk Blog

At one fell swoop: all at once, in one sudden move, finality at its most final.

I don’t know about you but I’ve used this particular phrase a lot. I love this phrase, not only because it so neatly, even elegantly encompasses its definition, but it’s Shakespearean! You can’t do better than that.  Good old Shakespeare, you’ve gotta give him credit for having a way with words. I adore Shakespeare and having read most of his plays admire him as much for his stories and ideas and imagery as I do his way with the language.

I also like this phrase because while it is pretty widely recognizable yet at the same time taking the words apart and removing them from the phrase it doesn’t really make a great deal of sense. Probably why the words that make it up are often misspelled: fail instead of fell; fowl (since the origin has to do with birds) instead of fell.

So where does it come from? Shakespeare we’ve already established, Macbeth is the play. Of course, good old Macbeth which brought us “toil and trouble” as well as “out damn spot!”

This particular phrase is indelibly sad, incredibly tragic, very, very final. The word “fell” pretty much says it all. It’s an old word, in use by the 13th century, that’s now fallen out of use apart from in this phrase and as the common root of the term ‘felon’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fell as meaning ‘fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible’, which is pretty unambiguous.

Shakespeare either coined the phrase, or gave it circulation, in Macbeth, 1605:

MACDUFF: [on hearing that his family and servants have all been killed]

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

The kite referred to is a hunting bird, like the Red Kite, which was common in England in Tudor times and is now making a welcome return after near extinction in the 20th century. The swoop (or stoop as is now said) is the rapid descent made by the bird when capturing prey.

Shakespeare used the imagery of a hunting bird’s ‘fell swoop’ to indicate the ruthless and deadly attack by Macbeth’s agents.

In the intervening years we have rather lost the original meaning and use it now to convey suddenness rather than savagery.

Grammar Punk Sentence: P E  

Staring aghast, Clementine was horrified to see that she’d destroyed the towering paper cup display at one fell swoop with a carelessly placed elbow.