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Chris -- 2025-05-10
Has anyone come across this instead of ‘one fell swoop’ before? I have just seen it in an MSN article:
http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/article … id=6738383
Think about how you type – do you do it all in one foul swoop, or do you carefully consider each sentence before proceeding?
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Or, One FOWL Swoop! You can just imagine those foul buzzard-fowl swooping down to get your goodies.
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I just logged back in, because the Word Gods just gave me the revelation that Fell and Foul probably are the same word. If we were to look back into English, we probably would find that they are just Yorkshire versus Wessex pronunciations of the same word, or some such scenario.
So… this is a good Eggcorn for me, because it would give me an opportunity to act snobby, and mock somebody who might say, “foul” rather than, “fell.” But you never should do this, because Fell and Foul really are not so different.
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Welcome to the Eggcorn website, AliceB. There has been much discussion here in the forum about the eggcorn you suggest. (See list below). You can locate these by clicking on the “Search” option in the red menu bar above. The search only takes single words, so you could enter “swoop” as your search word.
‘one felt swoop’ for ‘one fell swoop’ by klakritz Contribute! 1 2007-09-23 04:45:55 by Chris Waigl
One SWELL swoop. (fell). Alliterative eggcorn? by jorkel Contribute! 0 2007-03-18 01:03:46 by jorkel
Foul/fell by ozred Contribute! 2 2006-11-07 20:17:09 by jorkel
2 eggcorns come to mind by pentelly Contribute! 0 2006-09-01 13:57:19 by pentelly
“fail swoop” by iamliquescit Contribute! 8 2007-08-15 18:47:10 by BillDrissel
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In my family we used to use the spoonerism “one swell foop”.
polyglots of the world, unite ~ we have nothing to lose but our accents!
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