swag

In America people generally refer to swag as we do to merch.  Swag is the hats and beanies with corporate logos that every company encourages its employees to wear. This led us to wonder where swag came from.

Our swag is easily traceable to a Middle English word probably of Scandinavian origin meaning ‘a bag’. In British underworld slang of the 17th century the bag was full of loot, and it is this swag that appeared in the convict days and was entered into the Vocabulary of the Flash Language compiled by James Hardy Vaux with the meaning ‘wearing-apparel, piece-goods, etc., are all comprehended under the name swag, when describing any speak lately made, etc., in order to distinguish them from plate, jewellery, or other more portable articles.’ (By the way, a speak is a robbery’.

This swag led us to the swag that the swagman carries, his bag of worldly goods usually improvised by rolling everything in some bedding and tying the ends, then tying a rope to each end to fasten it around the body. His bedding became a bag.

In the mid 20th century in American swag, probably in the established sense of ‘loot’, came to be used for free promotional items particularly in the music industry where it was the term for free records sent to radio stations.  At the turn of the century promotional items came to be articles of value in their own right.

It became a popular promotion for companies to give new employees free company swag, branded items of apparel and other things that would embed the new employee in company loyalty and then be a way of advertising the brand.

There is another American swag — a colloquialism which is a shortened form of swagger and means ‘stylish’. But this swag is a much more recent invention (about 2000) so it comes after swag as ‘promotional loot’.