Buy Or Don’t Buy

Or, “How A Cliché Changes Its Usage, In Five Easy Steps”

I: Status Quo

November 4, 2005:

What’s more important: talent, coaching, or swagger? These quotes may help you decide. Each tells us something important about that magical gait.

[...] FOX’s Adam Schein, on the Cowboys’ rout of the Eagles a month ago: “Finally, swagger and aggressiveness from the Dallas Cowboys.” Maybe the nefarious Cowpokes swiped it from the Eagles. Or maybe Barry Switzer just misplaced it in the team offices a decade ago.

Chris Harlan, Beaver County Times, on Monday’s Steelers-Ravens game: “Ray Lewis was wearing jeans, but the Ravens’ swagger was still there.” It’s a key ingredient in upsets, and stars like Lewis can horde it for five years after a Super Bowl win and project it telepathically from the bench.

Pro Football Weekly’s college scouting report on Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder. “Plays with a sense of urgency. Very confident. Has a swagger.” It can be spotted by trained scouts, who no doubt watch for signs of it at Senior Bowl practices.

[...] This is serious stuff. [...]  With the exception of some rookies in tight situations, all football players are confident. Swagger must be equivalent to super-duper-ultra-confidence, not to be confused with cockiness, which we all know is bad.

II: Appropriation

August 8, 2007:

No one on the corner has swagger like us

Hit me on my burner, pre-paid wireless

We pack and deliver like UPS trucks

Already going to hell, just pumping that gas

III: Mainstreaming

September 6, 2008:

No one on the corner has swagger like us

Swagger like us

Swagger, swagger like us

Mr. West is in the building

Swagger on a hundred thousand, trillion

Hey yo, I know I got it first

I’m Christopher Columbus, y’all just the pilgrims

IV: Watering Down

August 7, 2009:

And now the dudes are lining up, ’cause they hear we got swagger

But we kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger

V: Self-Parody

January 5, 2010:

According to the Kansas City Star, [Justin] Bieber says, “I have a swagger coach that helps me and teaches me different swaggerific things to do,”

Yes! There’s more: “He has helped me with my style and just putting different pieces together and being able to layer and stuff like that.”

Study Questions:

1: What does the word ’swagger’ mean today?

2: What does the concept of ’swagger’ mean to you? What did it mean to you five years ago?

3: Are there other clichés that have had their meanings changed or obfuscated over time due to their usage in popular culture?

BONUS: Where does this line from Sufjan Stevens’s ‘The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us’ fit into the timeline?

All of my powers, day after day

I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed

Please submit your answers in the comments.