ten-strike

ten-strike (plural ten-strikes)

1. (bowling, dated) A strike; the knocking down of all ten pins with one delivery of the ball.
   • 1936, Robert E. Howard, Evil Deeds at Red Cougar:

     I started to tell him I warn't studying Jeff Middleton, but jest then a lot of whooping bust out in the bowling alley like somebody had made a ten-strike or something, and here come six men busting into the bar whooping and yelling and slapping one of 'em on the back.

2. (US, informal, dated) Any quick, decisive stroke or act.
   • 1908 September – 1909 September, Jack London, chapter 29, in Martin Eden, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published September 1909, →OCLC:

     At his lowest ebb, when his black suit was in pawn, he made a ten-strike—or so it seemed to him—in a prize contest arranged by the County Committee of the Republican Party. There were three branches of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at himself bitterly the while in that he was driven to such straits to live.

   • 1925 July, Weird Tales, page 136:

     GREYE LA SPINA werewolf serial, Invaders From the Dark, seems to have scored a ten-strike with the readers of Weird Tales, to judge by the letters that have poured in to The Eyrie

• “ten-strike”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.