Swagger
Where it’s found: Henry IV Part 2, Act II, Scene IV
How it’s used:
MISTRESS QUICKLY: If he swagger, let him not come here: no, by my
faith; I must live among my neighbours; I’ll no
swaggerers: I am in good name and fame with the
very best: shut the door; there comes no swaggerers
here: I have not lived all this while, to have
swaggering now: shut the door, I pray you.Where it comes from: Henry IV Part 2 was written sometime in the late 1590s. He had actually used an iteration of swagger before, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (written in the earlier half of the 1590s), found in Act III, Scene I:
PUCK: What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?But I like the use in Henry IV Part 2 better, if only because it uses the form swagger and also because the scene in which it’s found is pretty funny. Either way, the word’s first attestation is from the last decade of the 16th century. Yes, while Ke$ha is somehow making money because the world is convinced she’s got swagger, we can all thank Shakespeare for that.
So where’s it from? Swagger is related to the verb swag, which is not actually the spoils of pirates. Swag means roughly the same thing as swagger (“to move heavily or unsteadily”), and took a circuitous route to English: it started as an Old Norse word, sveggja, plus an Old English cognate, swingan, both of which mean “to swing.” [source]
Either way, Shakespeare’s got swagger.
I am particularly fond of today’s Shakespeare Word of the Day.
