请输入您要查询的英文词组:

 

词组 fell swoop
释义 fell swoop
      The phrase at one fell swoop is uttered by Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth when he learns that Macbeth has murdered his wife and children, as several commentators remind us. The metaphor is that of a hawk swooping down on defenseless prey, and fell here means "cruel, savage, ruthless." Evans 1957 points out that the phrase conveys both Macduffs sense of the suddenness of the murderous attack and also the helplessness of his wife and children in the face of a murderous tyrant. Bremner 1980 calls the phrase a cliché in modern use, and Evans says "the phrase is now worn smooth of meaning and feeling."
      Actually, what has happened is this. Fell has become a rarely used literary, rhetorical, poetic term, rather removed from common experience. It is not obsolete and you can still find it, but not often, and not in ordinary places. So the present-day reader of the Shakespearean phrase tends to understand Macduffs sense of the suddenness of the attack and to skip over the meaning of fell; the fell has worn smooth of meaning, but the notion of suddenness still adheres to the phrase.
      And the phrase has become an idiom, really; it has lost its literal meaning and has come to mean "all at once." It is neutral in application, not necessarily introducing a disastrous event. And Shakespeare's at often becomes in or with.
      These controls should be ended at one fell swoop — Milton Friedman, reprinted column, 1969
      What cosmic process created the stars and planets? Are new ones still being formed? Or were all that now exist made in one fell swoop? —Fred L. Whipple, Scientific American Reader, 1953
      EMP could incapacitate everything in one fell swoop —Thomas W. Buckman, quoted in Wall Street Jour., 29 May 1981
      With one fell swoop, I seized the door and pulled it wide open —Cleveland Amory, Saturday Rev., 6 Sept. 1975
      The phrase does get quite a lot of work, and one is not entirely unreasonable to consider it a bit of a cliché; but it has a fine pedigree. If you use it, with at or in or with, you should pay Shakespeare the respect of getting the rest right (though a typo may thwart your intent):
      It would not mean Utopia at one fell stroke —Douglas MacArthur, quoted in Springfield (Mass.) Union, 21 Jan. 1955
      They offered a cutesy-wootsy amendment to abolish 44 programs in one full swoop —James J. Kilpatrick, Springfield (Mass.) Morning Union, 1 May 1986
随便看

 

英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南,基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法,是英语学习的有利工具。

 

Copyright © 2004-2022 Newdu.com All Rights Reserved
更新时间:2024/10/30 10:21:43