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Swagger   /swˈægər/   Listen
Swagger

verb
(past & past part. swaggered; pres. part. swaggering)
1.
To walk with a lofty proud gait, often in an attempt to impress others.  Synonyms: cock, prance, ruffle, sashay, strut, tittup.
2.
Discourage or frighten with threats or a domineering manner; intimidate.  Synonyms: browbeat, bully.
3.
Act in an arrogant, overly self-assured, or conceited manner.  Synonyms: bluster, swash.



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"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books



... with a swagger, graded according to the number of his homicides, and a nod of recognition from him, was sufficient to make an humble admirer happy for the rest of ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... 'talents' and put him in training. He was a low, ignorant sailor; could scarcely write his own name; but he had biceps and a thick head. Didn't know when he was whipped. I can see him yet, as he used to look, with his giant shoulders and his swagger as he stepped into the ring. There was no nonsense about him—or his fist; could break a board with that. And how the shouts used to go up; 'the pet!' 'a quid on the pet!' 'ten bob on the stars and stripes!' meaning the costume he wore. Oh, he was a favorite in Camden Town! But ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... Georg Herwegh also joined us, and I was delighted to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something about his person, with ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were walking in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... said Pigeon, "is that F.S. corps are 'swagger'—the correct thing. It 'ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don't you know," he drawled, trying ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... woman. The scorn expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... represent almost the only real culture in Germany. I have been at pains to examine the literature of the German Synagogue, which if Germanism were Judiasm, ought to show a double dose of original sin. But so far from finding any swagger of a Chosen People, whether Jewish or German, I find in its most popular work—Lazarus's "Soziale Ethik im Judentum"—published as late as November, 1913, by the League of German Jews—a grave indictment of militarism. For the venerable philosopher, while justly explaining the glamour of the ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. 'I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... didn't know her!' If God keeps me in my seven senses, or five, or whatever number I have, I am not going to bring myself to such a pass; go you, brother, and be a government or an island man, and swagger as much as you like; for by the soul of my mother, neither my daughter nor I are going to stir a step from our village; a respectable woman should have a broken leg and keep at home; and to be busy at something is a virtuous damsel's holiday; be off to your adventures ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wounded comrade, and peace reigns. About eleven o'clock Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... haughtiness &c adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier^; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, bear like the Turk no rival near the throne [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount on one's high horse; set one's back up, bridle, toss the head; give oneself ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... fittings; they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the successes—which are not to be denied—of their outer part; the happy little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph and success of the present art of raiment—"fit" itself—is but the result of a masked ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... vapour, and swagger as thou dost; but why offended at this? Oh, but he has been a naughty man, and I have been righteous! sayst thou. Well, Pharisee, well, his naughtiness shall not be laid to thy charge, if thou hast chosen none of his ways. But since thou wilt yet bear me down that thou art righteous, shew now, even ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... men moved to the door and out, Phinuit with a brazen swagger, Jules without emotion visible, Monk ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... whistle of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the ruins. On that occasion, the incensed owner of the dismantled study, taking a mean advantage of the fact that he was a prefect, and so entitled to wield the rod, produced a handy swagger-stick from an adjacent corner, and, inviting Master Renford to bend over, gave him six of the best to remember him by. Which ceremony being concluded, he kicked him out into the passage, and Renford went down to the junior day-room to ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... drop of the native, and whose heart besides it expands into a sort of surly kindness that has something comical and not disagreeable in it. In addition to this, he never felt a confidence in his own authority with half the swagger which he did when three quarters gone. Steen and he were never friends, nor indeed was Steen ever a popular man among his acquaintances. In matters of trade and business he was notoriously dishonest, and in the moral and social relations of life, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Bar by classifying its tenders is a good one and should be acted upon. As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs. The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel. The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves. Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following method as the simplest and probably the most effective in its application ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... was crossing Westminster Bridge—old Thames marched all a-glitter. I watched his passage gratefully. It was that of a never-ending band. Playing all the way, too, but silently. Yet, the music was there. The pity was that one could not hear it. The pomp, the swagger, the swing of the Guards, the shifting movement, the bright array—all these were unmistakable. The very lilt of the air made itself felt. Very cheery. Certainly, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... undercurrent of waywardness among the Indians and breeds of the post. Teachers know how an epidemic of naughtiness will sweep a class; this was much the same thing. There was no actual outbreak; it was chiefly evinced in defiant looks and an impudent swagger. It was difficult to trace back, for the red people hang together solidly; a man with even a trace of red blood will rarely admit a white man into the secrets of the race. Under questioning they maintain a bland front that it is almost impossible to break down. Stonor ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... eyes fixed upon the glowing embers. For half an hour he was silent and still. Then, with the gesture of a man who has taken his decision, he sprang to his feet and passed into his bedroom. A little later a rakish young workman with a goatee beard and a swagger lit his clay pipe at the lamp before descending into the street. "I'll be back some time, Watson," said he, and vanished into the night. I understood that he had opened his campaign against Charles Augustus ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... from Angouleme, and was wearing them out). "My dear fellow, I strongly recommend you to put your ink on your boots to save blacking, and to take your pens for toothpicks, so that when you come away from Flicoteaux's you can swagger along this picturesque alley looking as if you had dined. Get a situation of any sort or description. Run errands for a bailiff if you have the heart, be a shopman if your back is strong enough, enlist if you happen to have a taste for military music. You have the stuff of three poets in you; ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... towards them with a swagger of his long yellow neck and his thin leggy body that Jeremy found especially offensive. Jeremy "bristled," and Mary ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... compliment by any means, though it may sound like one. Being an irreligious as well as a stupid man, he held that all who professed religion were hypocritical and silly. Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness. With the exception of Fred Martin, the rest of the crew of the Lively Poll resembled him in his irreligion, but they were very different in character,—Lockley, the skipper being genial; Peter Jay, the mate, very appreciative ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... baked apple in order to get down town in time. He was a disappointment to some extent, although his mode of dress attracted much comment as being far more sprightly than Duncan's and less startling than Roland's. He had a self-confident air and a bit of swagger that filled the eye, but a face and a voice that detracted, the one too boldly good-looking, with eyes roving and predaceous, the other a suggestion too loud and domineering. ... I fear association with Duncan ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... aw remember reightly that straw hat aw bowt last summer nobbut cost me eighteen pence, an shoo willn't want one as big as that; but awst nooan be to two-a-three penoth o' copper; an aw mud as weel have a bit extra to swagger wi." Soa he tuk a couple o' soverins,—ov coarse intendin to bring em back, an then hurried off wi Hepsabah as fast as he could for fear Mally wod ax some questions he ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... sand to wait for the putting ashore of the freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading-post. He did not swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered individuals did. A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying an unusually large pack. Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid calves of the man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along under his burden. The ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... (a backwoodsman), and Dorothy, his adopted daughter. Whatever concerned these two characters was keyed to the note of life. Like all Mr. Herne's acting, Reuben was utterly unconscious of himself. He went about as a backwoodsman naturally does, without posturing or swagger. With the sweetness and quaintness of Sam Lawson, he had the comfortable aspect of a well-fed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... band is a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular, sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... and desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse-dealer's—also "given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... most exorbitant manner, he was weak enough to imagine that he had provided a support against an evil day. He had the best among all false appearances of courage, which was a most unlimited assurance, whereby he would swagger the boldest men into a dread of his power, but had not the smallest portion of magnanimity, growing jealous, and disgracing every man, who was known to bear the least civility to those he disliked. He had ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... words not always evident in the London house. The narrow lodgings cause you to hear and overhear. Nothing is more curious to listen to than a young child's dramatic voice. The child, being a boy, assumes a deep, strong, and ultra-masculine note, and a swagger in his walk, and gives himself the name of the tallest of his father's friends. The tone is not only manly; it is a tone of affairs, and withal careless; it is intended to suggest business, and also the possession of a top-hat and a pipe, ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... of wax shall lodge each member Close by the hinges of a block of timber. We then no more shall Master, master, whoot, The swagger, who th' alarum bell holds out; Could one seize on the dagger which he bears, Heads would be free from tingling in the ears, To baffle the whole storehouse of abuses. The thus farewell Apollo and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... go for to say as I'm disturbing on ye, Passon," he remonstrated, mildly; "I ain't said a mortal wurrd! I was onny jes' keepin' my eye on the clap gate yonder, in case the party in the churchyard might walk through, thinkin' it a right-o'-way. Them swagger folk ain't got no sort of idee ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... he of sword or dagger, Cockt hat or ringlets of Geramb; Tho' Peers may laugh and Papists swagger, He doesn't care ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... great honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... came clanking around the curve of the small metal world. The antenna of his walkie-talkie glittered above his head. He seemed to swagger against the background ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... words be half spoken, I am with him in a trice Here, there, and everywhere, as the cat is with the mice: True Vetus Iniquitas. Lack'st thou cards, friend, or dice? I will teach thee to cheat, child, to cog, lie, and swagger, And ever and anon to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... and slink of the derelict and the pompous strut of the pharisee, or the swagger of the bully or the dandy, there is the golden mean in posture, which stands for self-respect and self-confidence, combined with courtesy ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... William, all swagger and confidence, started on a new tack. "Fans and fan-esses," he said, addressing the crowd through the megaphone, "why don't you root? Make a noise like you meant it. The Torontos have simply gotter win this game; they need it, but you gotter help 'em. Now then, every-body—ROOT," ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and kind ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... Then it was that, across half the gallery—for he had not moved from where she had first seen him—he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"—it reached straight— "ISN'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... these were mingled all the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs, such as those with which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... man stepped out of the doorway to the sidewalk. He was a big fellow, with something of the slouch and swagger that are to be observed in the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I marched off to the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... start he realised anew the significance of that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... clear congruity established between your versifying and your clothes; they will both be in the mode, and the mode the same. One feels about the Cavalier fashion that it was not serious either one way or the other. It had not the Elizabethan swagger; it had not the Restoration cynicism; it had not the Augustan urbanity. Go back now to the Elizabethan, and avoiding Shakespeare as a law unto himself, which is the right of genius—for the sonnets have wit as well as passion (but a mordant wit), everything that real love-poetry must have, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... people what he thinks; and never hesitates to hit rich and poor alike in his discourses. He has been transplanted to the Parish Church, and he will stir up a few of the respectable otiose souls there if he has an opportunity. There is a good deal of swagger about him; he believes in carry a stick and turning it; in admiring himself and letting other people know that he is of a cypher; there is much conceit and ever so much bombast about him; he likes giving historical lectures; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... tilled field flew in every direction as thirty or more horses raced across it, and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an ecstatic yell as Mrs. Pat forged ahead and sent her big horse over the fence at the end of the field in a style that happily combined swagger with knowledge. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... year of the reign of Charles the Second, most of the streets were left in profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity: yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude caresses to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had, since the Restoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and Tityre Tus had given ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane that young Prussian ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson

... brothers Grant failed to notice this fact. As the streets grew closer and more crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker curiosity deepened on the brows of Basil, and the figure of Rupert seen from behind seemed to fill the street with a gigantic swagger of success. At length, at the end of the fourth or fifth lean grey street in that sterile district, we came suddenly to a halt, the mysterious lieutenant looking once more about him with a sort of sulky ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... who were running speedily drew near. Most of them were out of breath, and all looked very much excited. The leader, who was quite a character in the Southern town, and a fierce appearing individual, with a military swagger, which Phil believed to be wholly assumed, immediately addressed himself to the two young Northerners on the new-fangled motor boat, which had been the wonder of the townspeople ever since it was dropped off the cars to be launched in ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... up, with a sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... humility in the world will only pass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. They always put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the same if you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You had better, therefore, play off the great man at once—hector, swagger, talk big, and ride the high horse over them: you may by this means extort outward respect or common civility; but you will get nothing (with low people) by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt. Coleridge ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... sorry and waiting for something to happen, Jay looked about for some way of amusing himself. He was something of a bully,—a great deal of a bully, in fact,—this dashing rascal in a gay blue coat; and the more he could swagger, the better ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... Age without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... boy!" with great smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... sinewy, any two of them weighing no more than one Russian, quiet, taciturn, genial and abstemious, were the children of the "Little White Father." The Russians were an aggressive, big, well set up, heavy type of men, by no means teetotalers, talkative, with overbearing swagger, always posing, talking contemptuously about the possible struggle in the East, invariably referring to the Japanese as "little monkey men." Fortunate for me was it that the Bayern was carrying both Russians and ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... to Prescott but swagger and cheap airs," decided Mr. Jordan, idly tossing pebbles. "It's a pity he can't be taken down a peg or two! And now I'm in for demerits before the academic year starts. Probably I shall have ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... fawns on Bolingbroke; she is an alchemist's crucible, that has every fair and rich thing thrown into it, but will only yield in return the calcined stones of chagrin and disappointment; she is a harlot, whose kisses are to be bought, and who runs after those who brawl the loudest and swagger the finest in the world's market-places. No! I want nothing of her. My lord here condemned her as I came in; he said she was the offspring of echoing parrots, of imitative sheep, of fawning hounds. Who can want ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... pompous and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats—not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best—but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if any), and loathe all fun and sport and athletics, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... life advanced quickly under the sun of Africa. His figure was slender and boyish, his face thinly bearded, a lack which was accentuated by the beard being divided into two points. Yes, now they, saw; it was his eyes that had dispelled the boast and swagger of the Gaul, the superciliousness of the Capuan, and whatever of brawling boldness had been in either. These eyes were black and large and flashing with courage and energy and the pride of noble birth. No detail of the scene seemed to ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... and except small well-trimmed mustaches and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder, slender in the hip, well limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly found amongst non-commissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as visible under the coarse drugget of a private soldier, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... up his horses before the castle gateway, where their hoofs beat a sort of fanfare on the stone pavement; and the footman, letting himself smartly down, pulled, with a peremptory gesture that was just not quite a swagger, the bronze hand at the end of ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... hair out of the way; pull your cap over your eyes; gather your veil down close; draw up your figure; throw back your head; walk with a little springy sway and swagger, as if you didn't care a damson for anybody, and—there! I declare no one could tell you from me!" exclaimed Capitola in delight, as she completed the disguise and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... mean theirs. Custer believed in the mailed hand, and if given the power he declared he would settle the Indian Question in America once and forever. His confidence and assumption and what Senator Dawes called swagger were not to their liking. Anyway, Custer was attracting altogether too much attention—the people followed him on ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... face vanished. Dick Gale heard footsteps and the tinkle of spurs. He strode to the window, and was in time to see a Mexican swagger into the front door of the saloon. Dick had only a glimpse; but in that he saw a huge black sombrero with a gaudy band, the back of a short, tight-fitting jacket, a heavy pearl-handled gun swinging with a fringe ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... quite black, and he had a very pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set rather jauntily on his head, and he was dressed in black with a long frock coat buttoned across the chest and fitting him close to the body. As he came, with a half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being disagreeable, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... the presence of the Dewan, Chunerbutty's defiant manner dropped from him, for he had always held that official in awe. His swagger vanished; he bent low and his hand went up to his head in a salaam. The Premier of the State, a wrinkled old Brahmin, was seated on the ground propped up by white bolsters, with a small table, a foot high, crowded with papers in front of him. He was dressed simply and plainly in white cotton ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... for he had fought bravely on the field of battle, was a sportsman and had about him that frank and abundant gaiete de coeur, which powerfully attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads. Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady CALLENDER's most intimate friends. She made no secret of her grande passion. She poured her ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various

... a bit, Harriet, but 'tis not an offensive swagger. As to his hat: 'tis a standing joke of the army as to how he keeps it on in battle. The hotter the fight the further on the side it gets. I saw a letter that General Greene writ to His Excellency in which he declared that Drayton fought with ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... more erect and even assumed a military swagger and spoke somewhat contemptuously of the line and mobiles, whose discipline was as lax as their own, and among whom drunkenness was rife, for whatever else failed, the supply of wine and spirits appeared inexhaustible. Cuthbert went not unfrequently to dine at the English ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... with thin shoulders and a paunch. He carried himself with a hell-raising swagger, left over from a time twenty years gone. His skin had the waxy look of lost floridity, his tuft of white hair was coarse and thin, his eyelids hung in the off-side droop that amateur physiognomists like to associate ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance

... distance, gradually separating itself from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air with ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... of precious "properties," this prodigious capital decoratively invested and scintillating throughout Christendom at effectively- scattered points. You see I am forced to agree after all, in spite of the sliding shutter and the profane swagger of the sacristan, that a certain pastoral majesty saved the situation, or at least made irony gape. Yet it was from a natural desire to breathe a sweeter air that I immediately afterwards undertook the interminable climb to the roof of the cathedral. This is another ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... Everybody who has bought a motor, and everybody who has dreamed of buying a motor, will comprehend me. Useless to feign that a motor is the most banal thing imaginable. It is not. It remains the supreme symbol of swagger. If such is the effect of a motor in these days and in Berkeley Square, what must it have been in that dim past, and in that dim town three hours by the fastest express from Euston? The imagination must be forced to the task of answering this ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... hard-working men—a little pinched and hungry, perhaps, and in many cases obviously dejected and ashamed of the qualification which gave them their seat. One or two, mostly of the younger, came in with a swagger and a rough joke; but Ned and his guests knew one another, and he quickly removed the lively young gentleman to a quiet corner out of harm's way. A fringe of spectators, mostly female, occupied the front seat in the gallery when proceedings commenced, which they did ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... meant to take Edmund Burgess and one workman for use, and one of the new apprentices for pleasure, letting them change in the middle of the day. The swagger of Giles actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... to have this out, Julia," he was saying. "If anybody or anything has come between us, there's going to be trouble. If that's the great Maraton, with his swagger evening clothes and big house, well, he's not the man for our job, and I shan't mind being the first to tell ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Valiant-for-Truth, on the one hand, as against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the fells Of the fallow-deer. And then what cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers; But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... her the odds of the rifle and the steed; give the man some commonplace employment to take the swagger out of him; let him come home reasonably tired and cross at night,—do you suppose he would find the 'kind' eyes and the 'smile'? I forgot to tell you that the Hunter of the Prairies is always welcomed by a smile ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... or not, pity could not see, but probably he was. At least the garrison of the islands is all black, being a Jamaican regiment of that color; and when one of the warriors comes down the white street, with his swagger-stick in his hand, and flaming in scarlet and gold upon the ground of his own blackness, it is as if a gigantic oriole were coming towards you, or a mighty tulip. These gorgeous creatures seem so much readier than the natives to laugh, that you wish to test them with a joke. But it might fail. The ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Billy; it sounded as though he were cursing him. Whatever it was, it was frightened and forceless talk; and when presently Ichi lapsed into English, it was the fear-stricken coolie who entreated, and not the swagger Japanese gentleman who commanded. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking all the stones out of his way, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... convinced, on the contrary, that you and I are far more in the right than these young gentlemen, though we do perhaps express ourselves in old-fashioned language, vieilli, and have not the same insolent conceit.... And the swagger of the young men nowadays! You ask one, "Do you take red wine or white?" "It is my custom to prefer red!" he answers in a deep bass, with a face as solemn as if the whole universe had its eyes on ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and frost ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... Hyde Park, where a big company of girl guides was drilling, watched by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Across a belt of grass some boy scouts were performing similar evolutions, marching with all the extra polish and swagger they could command, just to show the guides that girls were all very well in their way, but that no one with skirts could really hope to do credit to a uniform. Cecilia paused to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... appointed hour for the arrival of Blossett's train in London they had reached Victoria. It was an easy matter to store the car in a neighboring hotel, and presently they had the satisfaction of seeing Blossett swagger from a first-class carriage with a heavy Gladstone bag in his hand. He called a cab and was rapidly driven off in the direction of the city. Egan in his turn called another cab, giving the driver strict injunctions to keep the first vehicle in sight. It was a long chase, but it came to an end ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... uneasiness; but my alarm was awakened neither by his acts nor by words, but entirely by his manner, which was strange and even intimidating. At the beginning of our yesterday's interview, there was a sort of bullying swagger in his air, which, towards the end, gave place to something bordering upon the brutal vehemence of an undisguised ruffian, a transition which had tempted me into a belief that he might seek, even forcibly, to extort from me a consent to his wishes, or by ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... India, I should like to know who is to prevent me? This is the very thing above all others for me. I'll go off to the room where they are all assembled, and ask them why they want to disinherit me. I'll just swagger like Danjuro [91] the actor, and frighten them into giving me fifty or seventy ounces of silver to get rid of me, and put the money in my purse, and be off to Kioto or Osaka, where I'll set up a tea-house on my own account; and enjoy myself to my heart's content! I hope this will be a great night ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads, because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... and his left foot hacked off in the marketplace. No more were marriages to be celebrated with pomp and feasting, no more was the youthful warrior to swagger with flowing hair; henceforth, the believer must banquet on dates and milk, and his head must be kept shaved. Minor transgressions were punished by confiscation of property or by imprisonment and ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... the fathers of our liberty had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the calesero as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... set the candelabra on the billiard-table, made Semyon Matveitch a low bow, and with a slight swagger and a malignant smile, moved towards me. A cat, I imagine, approaches a mouse who has no chance of escape in that way. All my daring left me in an instant. I knew the man was capable of... beating me. I began to tremble; yes; oh, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... beautiful, I think, was a man—a splendid dark ruffian lounging along. He wanted to show off, and his swagger was perfect. Long black onyx eyes and a tumble of black curls, and teeth like almonds. But what do you think he carried on his wrist—a hawk with fierce yellow eyes, ringed and chained. Hawking is a favourite sport in the hills. Oh, why doesn't some ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... This the wise men helped their students to obtain. Let us sit for a while beside one of them and look through his eyes at the people who pass by. Here comes young Mr. Know-it-all. He wears a very fine garment, and walks with a swagger. His father and mother and all his aunts and uncles have always told him that he is the most clever person in the world. And, of course, he agrees with them. He will listen to advice from nobody. The wise man watches him pass, ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... down the blinds for one day; his habit when you are out, of sitting up on his back legs and begging you with his front paws to come and do something—a trick entirely of his own invention, for no one would think of teaching him anything; his funny nautical roll when he walks, which is nearly a swagger, and gives him always the air of having just come back from some rather dashing adventure; beyond all this there is still something. And whatever it is, it is something, which every now and then compels you to bend down and catch hold of his long silky ears, to look into ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... in this region are more youthful in aspect, carry themselves with more swagger, wear their hats jantily, with greasy curls coaxed to project beyond the brim. They affect a sort of secondhand gentility, cultivate great brooches, silver guard-chains, and whiskers, and have the air of persons claiming vice-royalty in the dominions in which they ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete, not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's loud voice, popped her head in at ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... more superior than ever. She swaggered round the room, and when she didn't swagger she strutted. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... water. So with a quick heave he sent a shining spout in the direction of the spy, who was drenched from knee to shoe-buckle. Then he caught up the pails with a clash of their iron handles and with the easiest swagger in the world took the direction of the spring, his spurs jingling as he went. A sailor on guard behind the rock would have aided him to fill them, but he told the man to keep his station, and dipped for himself. He brought them back brimming and with a courtly ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... faithful to their post, Mr. George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave- enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... one who has dropped in casually to look for a friend and, incidentally, to eat his breakfast. He stopped in the doorway, scanned the table with deliberation, and started to make his way towards Mary Carmichael with something of a swagger. Some one kicked a chair towards him at the head of the table. Some one else nearly upset him with one before he reached the middle, and the Texan remarked, quite ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... plays, which, in plain English, means an anticipatory performance to a private audience, given in order to assist the critics—or some of them—in carrying out their duties and fighting the clock, and perhaps also for the purpose of giving seats to some of the swagger "deadheads" who crowd the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... the Nottingham men, a tanner by trade, had so far been most successful, and, like Nat, he began to be disdainful of the rest, and to swagger it somewhat each time his turn to shoot came round. "The prize will surely be thine, Arthur-a-Bland," cried Monceux, loudly clapping his hands together after this fellow had made ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... officer, not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for assistance had he felt ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... shrunk, no risk I would not have taken, however foolhardy. In a sense I walked on air; I was lunatic; and all because I had held for an instant of time an adorable woman in my arms with no consent of hers. I believe now (and I hope it will not be counted against me) that it was with a little swagger I opened the door and stepped forth into the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... opportunities of learning; and envied them just as much their opportunities of play—their boating, their cricket, their foot-ball, their riding, and their gay confident carriage, which proceeds from physical health and strength, and which I mistook for the swagger of insolence; while Parker's Piece, with its games, was a sight which made me grind my teeth, when I thought of the very different chance of physical exercise which falls to the lot ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... "if it comes to that, I've business enough. Perhaps you'll just pay me this debt," he continued, changing his fawning manner into a bullying swagger. "I've waited ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... to meet Christian. He was close to her before he spoke, then he caught his cap off his head and waved it, and shouted: "Hurrah, Christian! Here I am! Home again! Don't pretend you never saw me before, because I won't stand swagger from you!" ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... schapska-shaped head-gear of Polish officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... Dear is the swagger that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! But—talk when you've tried it!—to win in the end, ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... picture to you how he said this. Simple as it now reads, he made it vital with meaning. The insolent boast was uttered with such a swagger that my face instantly ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... w' rattlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon, At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... cuddled him the more, and he sobbed at my knee in sheer enjoyment of the luxury of being babied. After that I think he took occasion to hurt himself upon every possible opportunity in order that he might come to my room to be taken care of and petted and comforted. He left all his swagger and bluster and bravado outside, and I babied him to his heart's content, feeling sure that it was the first time in all his dozen years that this child's right had come to him. But he did not allow these private seasons of relaxation, which he trusted me not ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... manly and bores your fellows. Don't cry out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell no tales about your companions, and no lies about yourself. Avoid all 'swank,' 'side,' 'swagger,' braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at." (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, except in his press, habitually understates everything.) "Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play games hard, and keep the rules ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... cavalier into the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... clatter. The stairs resounded to a series of unsteady footbeats, and the door of my study was flung back. In the opening, staring at me with quiet dignity, stood a young, careless fellow, about five feet ten in height and decidedly dark of complexion. The swagger of his entrance branded him as an adventurer. The ghastly pallor of his face, which was almost colorless, branded him as a man who has found something ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... significance of eutrapelos and eutrapelia. In fact, we have every reason to be proud of him. For the present is a noisy and affected age; it is given overmuch to clamorous devotion and extravagant repudiation; there is an element of swagger in all its words and ways; it has a distressing and immoral turn for publicity. Matthew Arnold's function was to protest against its fashions by his own intellectual practice, and now and then to take ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... cleverness, but have no value and no interest today. One gets from Chatterton's letters and miscellanies an unpleasant impression of his character. There is not only the hectic quality of too early ripeness which one detects in Keats' correspondence; and the defiant swagger, the affectation of wickedness and knowingness that one encounters in the youthful Byron, and that is apt to attend the stormy burst of irregular genius upon the world; but there are things that imply a more radical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Mac; it would take months of research to discover it. I can't explain your psychology, but I'll tell you something about my own. These swagger corduroys I'm wearing . . . when I bought them someone asked me why I chose corduroy, and I at once answered: 'Economy! They'll last ten years!' But that wasn't the real reason, I bought them because I wanted to have folk stare at me. I've got an inferiority ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... at some carouse. Where each to each his brag allows, And many a comrade praised to me His pink of girls right lustily, With brimming glass that spilled the toast, And elbows planted as in boast: I sat in unconcerned repose, And heard the swagger as it rose. And stroking then my beard, I'd say, Smiling, the bumper in my hand: "Each well enough in her own way. But is there one in all the land Like sister Margaret, good as gold,— One that to her can a candle hold?" Cling! clang! "Here's to her!" went around The board: "He ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... knew—and he was in correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... close to mine, and as he knew my weak side, the scamp continued: 'Just think what a swagger thing it will be to do, and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give you a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... I wasn't afraid you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?" he more ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright



Words linked to "Swagger" :   colloquialism, gypsy, fashionable, cajole, behave, gait, Australia, act, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, gipsy, Britain, sweet-talk, U.K., inveigle, blarney, do, Commonwealth of Australia, itinerant, Great Britain, palaver, United Kingdom, stylish, walk, coax, UK, wheedle



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