one fell swoop

After Shakespeare, in Macbeth, act iv, scene 3, where Macduff learns his wife and entire family are murdered:

Ro. Wife, Children, Servants, all that could be found. […]

Macd. […] All my pretty ones?
Did you say All? Oh Hell-Kite! All?
What, All my pretty Chickens, and their Damme
At one fell swoope?

The imagery is of a bird of prey ("hell-kite") ransacking a whole nest at one blow. In later uses of the expression, the force of the metaphor is reduced or lost.

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one fell swoop (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) One stroke; one action or event with many results.

   Changing the oil lubricates the engine and removes debris in one fell swoop.

   • 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iv, scene 3:

     What, All my pretty Chickens, and their Damme
     At one fell ſwoope?

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare & Co.; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483:

     , Episode 16:

     ...they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.

• swoop
• at one stroke
• kill two birds with one stone

• one swell foop