Foul and Fowl are pretty much the same word in my book. Nothing smells like chicken **** !
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It's actually fell swoop, though MacDuff was talking about chickens so you can see where the confusion would arise. . .
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Um... I'm thinking you are confusing foul as in foul ball, foul smell, foul taste with fowl = bird. My Betas did warm me that I'm messing up my idioms again. But I figured "foul" fit Tempus better than "fell".
Foul and Fowl are pretty much the same word in my book. Nothing smells like chicken **** !
And do you mean MacDuff the Crime Dog? Or is that MacRuff? Or is MacDuff... there was a MacDuff in MacBeth wasn't there? I'm confused by that reference.
Poor Macduff, learning that Macbeth has had his wife and children murdered, cries “What, all my pretty chickens and their dam/At one fell swoop?” Thus enters the language a popular phrase meaning “terrible blow” (the image is of a ruthless hawk swooping down to slaughter helpless chicks).
Copied and pasted from
http://www.english-for-students.com/Fowl-Swoop.html . Guess it really should be Fowl Swoop. . .
