at one stroke
English
Alternative forms
- at a stroke, at a single stroke, in one stroke
Prepositional phrase
at one stroke
- (literally) With a single blow, effort, or act.
- 1895, Thomas Hardy, chapter 9, in Jude the Obscure:
- I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatly accomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in the rain.
- 1898, G. A. Henty, "On A Mexican Ranche" in Yule Logs: Longmans' Christmas Annual:
- I should be ready to do the job without being paid for it, though I don't say it is not sweeter to get both gold and revenge at one stroke.
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- (figuratively, by extension) At once, immediately; in an instant.
- 1903, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 7, in Robert Browning:
- [T]he whole object of the poem is to show what infinities of spiritual good and evil a current and sordid story may contain. When once this is realised, it explains at one stroke the innumerable facts about the work.
- 1909, Edith Wharton, "A Torchbearer" in Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses:
- . . . with the wind of ruin in his hair,
- Soul sprang full-statured from the broken flesh,
- And at one stroke he lived the whole of life.
- 1916, Booth Tarkington, chapter 7, in Seventeen:
- At one stroke his dashing raiment gave him high superiority over Johnnie Watson and other rivals who might loom.
- 1997 Dec. 14, Vicki Goldberg, "Photography View: One Eye on Art, the Other on Commerce," New York Times (retrieved 1 Jan 2014):
- In a blaze of creativity during 10 days in 1950 photographing the Paris collections, he became at one stroke one of the major fashion photographers of the century.
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Synonyms
- (with a single blow, effort, or act): in one fell swoop
- (at once, immediately; in an instant): all of a sudden, in one fell swoop, suddenly
Translations
with a single effort or act
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at once — see at once
See also
- at one blast
- at one blow