What is "swag"?

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The Slang Dictionary says:

I always thought swag referred to all the merch (merchandise) sold at concerts, the t-shirts with the band logo, sweat shirts, etc.

In fact I recently heard a musician call it the Sh** We Are Getting and conversely, the Sh** We Ain't Getting.....swag.

Personally I always thought it had something to do with pirates and swag was their ill gotten gains....

Having swag means you carry yourself across with style and give off a confident vibe. Simple as that.

I thought that was swagger....

It's a word that should be banned from the English lexicon.

I always thought it was a style of living room lamp, which hangs from the ceiling and a wall, on a chain.

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&safe ... 80&bih=673

Charles

AceOfSpades pretty much matched the response I got from a teenager recently.

However, this teen seemed to combine the idea of swagger with more style aspects than just how you carry yourself, leading me to believe that perhaps some teens nowadays consider it how they present themselves.

Sort of like how you "grand" yourself, the person you want to present to the public. In other words, if you were a product and your name was a brand name, what would you wish to convey? that seemes to be somewht what "swag" meant to him. But maybe it's a regional thing, or fromt he many answers here, maybe something different from person to person, which has always seemed weird to me.

SWAG- Stuff We All Get.
Like if you're an audience member on a talk show and they give out free stuff. That's swag.

I could be wrong but that makes the most logical sense to me.

Swag has various meanings,which I think is apparent from the various posts.

In modern 'urbanspeak' I believe it means a person's overall appearance,demeanour and confidence. This meaning is a back-formation from 'swagger'

The original word swag means either
a) goods or valuables,especially gained by improper means.
b) a curtain draped to hang in a curve
c) an ornamental festoon of flowers or fruit,or a carving depicting it
d) in Australia,the pack of a swagman (casual worker)
e) in British slang,to lurch or sway

The word swagger probably derived from e) and is similar to the Norwegian 'Swagga = to sway'

Swag, as others have pointed out, is free crap you get somewhere.

To have swagger, is to display a (typically) undeserved sense of arrogance with the way one acts and/or walks (see: most pop and rap artists).