Swag

[Michael Quinion]

A subscriber has asked me about the sense of 'swag' to mean free
advertising products and prize give-aways. I see from a Web
search that it is indeed used in North America in that sense, or
more generally what I would refer to as 'freebies'.

It's an obvious enough extension, I would suppose, of the older
teen slang sense of 'money', or 'valuables', in its turn from
the well-established meaning of a thief's booty.

But can anyone help with dating for it? It's not given in any of
the slang dictionaries I have available, so my impression is
that it dates only from the mid-1990s. Or am I wrong?

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
<editor at worldwidewords.org>
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/>