In the Europe 1 program "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern looks every day at the roots of an everyday expression.

Friday, he is interested in the origins of "swag", a slang word of young people which means "cool", as the preceding generations said in their time "connected" or "chébran".

Stéphane Bern suggests every day, in 

Historically yours 

with Matthieu Noël, to discover these expressions that we use on a daily basis without necessarily knowing their origin.

Friday, the host explains the roots of the word "swag", an adjective that validates your cool.

Contrary to appearances, this one is far from recent.

To understand, we even have to go back to the 16th century.

Gone are the days when Yves Mourousi, a buttock on François Mitterrand's desk, asked him the meaning of "chébran" and that the president replied that it was more topical to say "wired".

So many words that mean to be in tune with the times.

Adjectives today replaced among young people by the word "swag".

>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

This Anglicism comes from the verb "swagger", which has given across the Atlantic the "swaggering", that is to say bulging the chest and bragging.

Consider that Shakespeare was already using the expression in 1595 in his play

A Midsummer Night's Dream.

 "What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here," he writes, which reads "Who are these rustic characters that make the swagger?"

in French.

A term validated by American stars

Today, to have swag or to be swag is to have style.

In the United States the biggest idols have used the formula, like Jay Z and Kanye West.

Justin Bieber even sang "All you gotta do is swag" ("All you gotta do is have the swag").

But swag is also for some an acronym. The letters s, w, a and g could have meant in the 1960s "Secretly We Are Gay", "secretly we are gay", to designate a homosexual community that wanted to escape the American morality police. An origin which remains uncertain. What is certain is that being swag means being cool. Another Anglicism.