Swaggy Slang

When I ordered Radiohead tickets, Ticketmaster threw in a free Rolling Stone subscription (the two companies must be desperate--RS for readers and Ticketmaster to interest me in more concerts).  I've read RS off and on over the years; the journalism is always very good, but the subjects are often uninteresting.  A perfect example of this is the recent article on Justin Bieber.  I'm surprised I even read it, but I suppose it's useful to know what the kids are into these days.

Bieber himself seemed very boring (sorry, tweens of the world!), but I did find interesting his use of the word "swaggy".  I hadn't heard that word before.  The way Bieber used it in the interview, it seemed to mean something akin to cool or awesome.  Apparently, he also uses the word in his song "Boyfriend" but I couldn't stand to listen to it (yes, I have my limits).

I'm not sure where the word comes from.  Perhaps even from Bieber himself but I suspect that's doubtful.  "Swaggy" already exists in English, but it's an older word, which means basically sagging from weight, likely unrelated to the new version.  Pirate culture and associated words have been popular in the past few years, so the word could be an adjective variant of "swag" meaning treasure.  "Swag" has certainly been used in recent years to describe getting free stuff from a convention or whatever.  The word could also come from hip-hop, which seems to delight in wordplay.  Perhaps Bieber picked it up from one of the rappers he occasionally collaborates with.  It could even stem from Canadian English slang since Bieber is Canadian, but that seems unlikely, eh?  The Bieber article also describes one of Bieber's associates as his "swagger coach" so "swaggy" could be related more to "swagger" than it is to "swag".  Bieber and his friends also use the word "swag" to mean cool.  There might be more possibilities of the word's origin, but I'd better "chillax" on the etymology before I catch a case of "Bieber fever".

We'll see if "swaggy" has any staying power or if it will be a fad like Bieber himself will likely be.