swagman

Noun

swagman (plural swagmen)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, historical) A man who travels around with a swag (“bundle of personal items”); specifically, an itinerant person, often seeking work in exchange for food and lodging.
   • And then the swagman was such a companionable little fellow, and told such funny little yarns, and sung so many snatches of odd songs whilst he was at work that once or twice the old man relaxed the cross expression of his facial muscles, and allowed himself to be betrayed into a grim smile, and at...1865 November 18, Robert P. Whitworth, “Mary Summers: A Romance of the Australian Bush”, in The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and the Arts, volume I, number 12...
   • Then the bells struck up for church, and the streets became crowded with well-dressed, warmly-clothed people, hurrying to their various places of worship, and casting glances of pitying curiosity at the two miserable, half-drowned swagmen as they passed.1867 September 14, “a swagman”, “In Forma Pauperis”, in The Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and the Arts, volume III, number 107, Melbourne, Vic.: William Clarson and...

   Synonyms:

   hobo, sundowner, swagger, swaggie, swagsman, traveller, tussocker, bum, stiff, casual

2. (UK, archaic) A person who sells or trades in trinkets or items of low value.
   • The practice of selling by commission, the same as I have shown to prevail among the costers, exists among the miscellaneous dealers of whom I am treating, who are known among street-folk as "swag-barrowmen," or, in the popular ellipsis, "penny swags;" the word "swag" meaning, as I before showed, a...1861, Henry Mayhew, “Of the Street-sellers of Manufactured Articles”, in London Labour and the London Poor; a Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Those that Cannot Work...
3. (US, slang) A middleman who buys and sells stolen goods; a fence.
   • He is, in the street talk, a swagman, one of perhaps hundreds of hustlers in the city who distribute an estimated $5-million worth of goods ripped off each year at New York's airports, waterfronts, factories and truck parts. [...] According to Tommy, the mob uses swagmen like himself as...1971 November 22, Frank E. Emerson, “They Can Get It for You BETTER Than Wholesale”, in Clay S[chuette] Felker, editor, New York, volume 4, number 47, New York, N.Y.: NYM Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC...