Swag, Meaning Bunting

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marian, and I am calling from Norfolk, Virginia.

Hello, welcome to the show.

I went to see the Downton Abbey movie the first weekend.

It came out, of course, and the movie’s set in 1927, right?

But one of the things that struck me, there was a quick moment in the movie where, and you know the plot here, the king and queen are coming to visit Downton Abbey, and there’s all this activity.

So there’s this moment where Lady Cora is talking about the preparations, and she says, and then there’s all the swag or something like that.

And it made it sound like swag as stuff, preparations, not the swish of fabric that you might have on draperies.

And I got to wondering about the word swag and was it a thing in 1927?

And you’re sure that she didn’t mean like the festooning or the bunting or special drapes or any kind of luxurious?

Or curtains or tablecloths or that sort of thing going down?

That didn’t seem like the context of her comment, but maybe it was.

Maybe she was talking about all the flags and decorations that they have to put up.

What else would she have meant by swag?

She’s not talking about gift bags with iPods in them, is she?

I don’t think so.

Well, the word swag in terms of just stuff or plundered booty was in use for a good century before 1927.

I’m wondering if it was the festooning because swag has been used to mean that kind of thing that Grant was describing.

Yeah, since the late 1700s at least.

And certainly if you’re gussing up a place because the king and queen are coming, there is a lot of decorating and ornamenting happening.

Right.

So the swag would have meant all the decorating they had to do in preparation.

Yeah, it could have been.

The Downton Abbey folks have been generally pretty good about avoiding anachronisms.

They made a few goofs in the series.

If you remember them, there was a scene where somebody talked about blowing a gasket.

Yeah.

And the expression push comes to shove, I remember that they got caught out on both of those because those weren’t around in that sense.

But none of them were crucial to the plot.

Right.

Nothing was crucial to the plot.

And push comes to shove was around in this country, in the U.S., but not in that country for a while.

But swag as a way of saying, you know, festooning or decorating was a thing back in the 19th century?

Absolutely, yeah.

Well back to the late 1700s for sure.

And there are other uses of it.

Like as Martha said, the plunder or booty uses of it also is that old, several centuries old.

Also the idea of a swag bag, which is a thing you carry your personal belongings around, existed, but it was Australian and New Zealand that existed at the time, too.

I don’t see how either of those applies.

The booty or kind of plunder term doesn’t really apply.

Do we know the origin of the word swag?

No, we don’t.

It might come from some Scandinavian word, but the truth is that the swag in terms of booty or plunder, at least, we’re not totally sure.

Maybe it has to do with some kind of bag.

But not an acronym.

Right.

Definitely not an acronym.

Not an acronym.

Yeah, Marianne, what did you make of the movie?

Well, people asked me how I liked it, and I said, well, if you liked, it was like watching a whole season of Downton Abbey in like two and a half hours.

Yeah.

And I said, if you liked the series, you’re going to like the movie because there’s no backstory.

They just throw you right in the middle of it.

Yeah.

And if you don’t know what’s going on before you walk in the movie theater, you’re going to be completely lost.

Well, Marianne, I want to thank you for the question, and I want to thank you for the earworm.

Now I’ve got the Downton Abbey theme in my head.

Oh, you’re very welcome.

It was great to talk to you guys.

Thank you so much for your call.

Thanks for calling, Mary.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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