Time for another word brought to us by Shakespeare!
This time we’re looking at swagger. We all recognize a swagger when we see it–“to strut defiantly or insolently.” But did you know that the base word swag means “to sway”? So it’s the swaying motion of that strut that gives it its name.
Shakespeare was apparently quite fond of the word, using it in King Lear, Henry IV Part 2, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The verb came first in Shakespeare in the 1580s, but the noun for such a strut didn’t follow until 1727! I’m surprised at how long it took to cross that part-of-speech divide!
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
I was surprised that it came from strut! I had always heard it was loot taken or stolen by force. “Booty,” the same. So when we heard our teenager say he had swag…😳 we were afraid he had stolen something. He had to define it for us = swagger. Oh.
So where did the pirates get their “swag?”
Updates as they occur.
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