In one fell swoop
Can anyone shed some light on where the phrase "in one fell swoop" came from? I've heard it all my life and understand it current meaning, but where did it come from?Thanks,Celeste Wolffe, KY, USA
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Fascinating response at Quinon's World Wide Words.The phrase was used by Shakespeare, but the "fell" in the phrase is more related to "felon" than "fall."
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More plainly: it has nothing to do with fall. Fell is an old word for 'bad, evil'; Shakespeare used it as part of a phrase describing the sudden descent of a bird of prey (in one fell swoop = in a...
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Ah, but this is just one example of a living language - we've taken a linguistic vote over the centuries and decided to let it stay.Power to the people!It's just struck me how many f-l words in...
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It's a slow Friday evening. I can't resist.I do not love thee, Dr Fell,The reason why I cannot tell;But this I know, and know full well,I do not love thee, Dr Fell.-- Tom Brown, written c. 1680It's a...
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Celeste: Since you've taken the trouble to ask --- it's not IN anything --- it's "AT one fell swoop" (Macbeth, act IV, scene 3).Matthew Arnold wrote to Shakespeare: "Others abide our question. Thou...
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When Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was filmed, they had to create a prehistoric-type flying creature for the Ringwraiths to ride on. In his book Tolkien didn't describe the creature in detail, just...
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this CGI animal is called "the Fell Beast" and it was my impression from the way it was stressed in speech that the people using the phrase thought that was the name of the species, not a simple...
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The first time I heard the word fell, it referred to the fells and valleys in the English Lake District. Shortly after that, when I first read Tolkein, I never questioned that a fell beast would be...
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a single undigested lump of languageAnd when it is digested and coughed back up
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Right here on Wordorigins!By the way, I'm off to California for a week. Don't say anything interesting while I'm gone, OK?
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Quote:Don't say anything interesting while I'm gone, OK?As long as you promise not to do anything interesting while you're away.Safe journey, lh, and soak up some of that California sun for me.BTW let...
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So is there any link from any of the meanings of fell to the slang term feller/fellah for a man? According to SOED, it doesn't seem so. Fellow is from OE feoh (as is Fee) + OE lag = to lay.Fell as in...
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Quote:Sad to say, many of these young film makers have seen every movie ever made but would be hard pressed to name a book they've read since high school.I work in the film industry (the software...
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Right you are Dave, about Pixar. I was thinking about sound studios when I made the comment, but it was inaccurate.
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BTW let me know if you run into any Californians who say Los Angeles with a hard g. We had a thread on it ages back but couldn't figure out whether this was a vestige of some early Anglo pronunciation...
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I'm not sure that the producers as a group are so literate.Coincidentally, last night I was reading an entertaining account of the travails of a screenwriter who worked on the movie The Puppet...
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Quote:I didn't hear the evil meaning for the word fell till later, possibly in the James Herriot books, where mention is occasionally made of the fellmonger - the man whose name escapes me at the...
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Is that right? To my young towny mind it seemed very sinister, but if that's what fell means, then thanks for putting me straight.
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And if my memory serves, good old Tolkien - who as a language specialist knew all these Old English words and probably spoke them in his everyday life as a matter of course - uses this sense of the...
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