one-two punch

English

Noun

one-two punch (plural one-two punches)

1. (boxing) A combination of two punches, one from each hand, thrown in rapid succession.
2. (by extension) A rapid sequence or combination of two things that has a quick or powerful effect.
   • 2007 November, Elizabeth Drake, “Combine and conquer: Use these winning food pairings to protect your health”, in Men's Health, volume 22, number 9, →ISSN, page 124:

     Fish + Broccoli
     The benefit: You can sock it to cancer with this one-two punch.

   • 2012 March 21, Dwight Crow, “'Everything Is Automated': How Web Start-Ups Attack the Offline Economy”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     Products are increasingly differentiated by the one-two punch of crowd-sourced review and easy factual comparison.

   • 2016 July 6, Sierra Petersen, quotee, “Dinosaurs killed off by ‘one-two punch’ of climate change and asteroid strike – study”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     “We find that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was caused by a combination of the volcanism and asteroid impact, delivering a theoretical ‘one-two punch’,” said study co-author Sierra Petersen of the University of Michigan, using boxing terminology.

Related terms

• one-two