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Literary notes about SWAG (AI summary)

The word "swag" in literature is remarkably versatile, functioning both as a concrete term for a bundle of personal belongings and as a metaphor for a character’s demeanor or fate. In some contexts, it straightforwardly denotes a package or load—often of stolen loot or personal effects—even described in detail as items rolled up in a blanket ([1], [2], [3]). In other instances, authors use "swag" to evoke a sense of relaxed movement or an informal, confident bearing, implying how characters carry both physical loads and the weight of their experiences ([4], [5], [6]). This duality enriches narrative textures, allowing the term to oscillate between tangible property and evocative imagery that reflects character and circumstance ([7], [8]).
  1. The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the “swag.”
    — from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  2. i. p. 285: "Swag, which consists of his personal properties rolled up in a blanket."
    — from Austral English A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia by Edward Ellis Morris
  3. and he fished a handful of jewelry from one of his side pockets; “this is some of the swag I stole last night when I robbed a house.”
    — from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs
  4. Ryan sighed heavily as he resumed his swag.
    — from In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson
  5. V. be pendent &c. adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle[obs3], flap, trail, flow; beetle.
    — from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget
  6. Three of our boys were killed, however, before we got the swag.
    — from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  7. “Tell you what, sir,” whispered the sergeant; “there’s only one chap in it, and he’s got such a swag he’s obliged to keep stopping to rest.”
    — from The Kopje Garrison: A Story of the Boer War by George Manville Fenn
  8. Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander- Drink, ho!- are nothing to your English.
    — from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

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