Other forms: swaggering, swaggers
To swagger is to walk in a way that shows too much confidence. Swagger in, a confident swagger, swaggering about.
The too much is the judgement in it — a swagger is confidence on display, and displaying it is what makes it objectionable. As a noun it names both the walk and the attitude. Note that the word first appears in Shakespeare, as a frequentative of swag, meaning to sway.
1verbswaggerTo walk in a way that shows too much confidence.
“He swaggered into the room as if he owned the place.”
swagger is a way of walking.
A frequentative of swag, to sway, first found in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1595.
Built from
A frequentative form of swag (“to sway”), first attested in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), see quotations.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA