swagger
English
WOTD – 29 September 2009
Etymology 1
A frequentative form of swag (“to sway”), first attested in 1590, in A Midsummer Night's Dream III.i.79:[1]
- PUCK: What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?
Verb
swagger (third-person singular simple present swaggers, present participle swaggering, simple past and past participle swaggered)
- To walk with a swaying motion; hence, to walk and act in a pompous, consequential manner.
- (Can we date this quote by Beaconsfield as well as title, page, and other details?)
- a man who swaggers about London clubs
- (Can we date this quote by Beaconsfield as well as title, page, and other details?)
- To boast or brag noisily; to be ostentatiously proud or vainglorious; to bluster; to bully.
- (Can we date this quote by Collier as well as title, page, and other details?)
- To be great is not […] to swagger at our footmen.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Jonathan Swift to this entry?)
- (Can we date this quote by Collier as well as title, page, and other details?)
Derived terms
Translations
to walk with a swaying motion
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to act in a pompous manner
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to boast or brag noisily
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Noun
swagger (countable and uncountable, plural swaggers)
- Confidence, pride.
- A bold or arrogant strut.
- 1902, Joseph Conrad, chapter I, in Heart of Darkness:
- He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute.
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- A prideful boasting or bragging.
Translations
confidence, pride
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bold or arrogant strut
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prideful boasting or bragging
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Adjective
swagger (comparative more swagger, superlative most swagger)
- (slang, archaic) Fashionable; trendy.
- Robert Barr
- It is to be a very swagger affair, with notables from every part of Europe, and they seem determined that no one connected with a newspaper shall be admitted.
- Ernest Rutherford
- Mrs J.J. [Thomson] looked very well and was dressed very swagger and made a very fine hostess.
- Robert Barr
References
- “swagger” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
Anagrams
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