Come talk about fun and quirky words in the English Language. Posting is open to all members.
one fell swoop
This idiom was first popularized (or perhaps first coined) by Shakespeare in Macbeth in 1605. Macduff had just heard that all his family and servants had been killed and said:
All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
A kite is a hunting bird that swoops down and seizes its prey. The Oxford English Dictionary gives us an older meaning for the word "fell" as "fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible," and lists it as the original root of our word "felon."
So in its original meaning, the phrase conveyed a note of suddenness and savagery that we don't necessarily apply to it today.




I agree with @underused. This is a great idiom.
I've read Macbeth but had never realized this was the the origin of the phrase. Rereading the original passage along with your picture of the kite really gives the phrase some serious savagery.
@BQuirky, this is pretty badass. It might be one of my favourite posts so far.
Cool! Yeah, I got a double dose of curiosity. Or nosiness, depending on your perspective.