DrCube, it’s clear that “swag” is a much more common term. I suspect that “schwag” was a later joking version of the word.
Apparently it’s both swag and schwag. Actually my dad said “schwag” thinking about it some more, not swag.
The Middle English dictionary [cite?], reflects a wonderful portmanteau in “swag” of the words “sway” and “sag.”
I think it’s blatantly obvious that this is EXACTLY what what happened. That’s why it’s in Urban Dictionary.
Which pretty much establishes that it’s complete bullshit.
“Secretly We Are Gay” is very clearly a backronym.
Another example of a backronym is the Amber alert. It was originally named after a missing girl named Amber; eventually some oh-so-clever official decided it should be an acronym for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response”.
mmm
Precisely. It’s just like how people go around saying, “You know, the real origin of jeans sagging is based on gay men in jail advertising themselves as available.” It’s simple sour grapes in this case…some people look at men who are cocky and over confident and they just can’t stand it. They feel the need to ‘pull them down’ in some way. Put them back in their place. “Well, now you aren’t any better than me, mr. cool guy, because your confidence and style is really a secret code for the GAY!”
I understand how it can annoy, though. I mean, the hip hop culture used to be much less saturated with the word…and over-saturation can drive people up the wall. Once you have every rapper and pop star naming their songs after a word, you really do feel like, ugh. But that’s the nature of slang…if a cornball gets a hold of a catchy slang term, they will over-use it and make it corny.
“Swagger” has been around forever, obviously, like many posters have pointed out. I have noticed it in black culture to mean “cool, cocky, lots of style” for many years. In hip hop culture, I can remember some songs that go back nearly 25 years! (Brand Nubian used the term on more than one song way back in 1990 at least). It being shortened to ‘swag’ is pretty old too, with Jay Z making a song about it at least 10 years ago.
So the idea that now, 20 years later, Urban Dictionary would come up with some retarded backronym is just silly.
It can work because gay scholars often play pretty loose when “outing” historical figures.
So Tarantino was making it up in Pulp Fiction when he said the purpose of a tongue stud was to aid in fellatio?
That was Jody’s purpose in getting one, but I don’t think the implication was that’s why tongue studs were invented or that’s everyone’s purpose in getting one.
‘Secretly We Are Gay’ doesn’t even flow nicely. **MMM **is right - like posh, or gorp, it’s an explanation (and not even a good one) looking for a question.
Everything Tarantino says is made up. Some of it happens just to be true, but that’s just a coincidence.
THIS… Only it’s a SCIENTIFIC Wild Assed Guess
When I first heard of swag (in the context of free goodies) it was combined with the obvious backronym “stuff we all get.” It appears people have now out-backronymed the backronym.
I took it as Tarantino’s snide way of saying that of course it’s the only reason…
Wait, “gorp” isn’t an acronym? <googles>
Huh, apparently it’s from a root word meaning “eat greedily”. I never knew.
I always thought those swag light fixtures from the 70’s were gay. Go figure.