English

Alternative forms

• at a stroke, at a single stroke, in one stroke

Prepositional phrase

at one stroke

1. (literally) With a single blow, effort, or act.
   • 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, ch. 9:

     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.

2. (figuratively, by extension) At once, immediately; in an instant.
   • 1903, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Robert Browning, ch. 7:

     [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, Seventeen, ch. 7:

     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.

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