| 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 |
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