What's the difference between stagger and swagger?

Stagger


Definition:

  • (n.) To move to one side and the other, as if about to fall, in standing or walking; not to stand or walk with steadiness; to sway; to reel or totter.
  • (n.) To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail.
  • (n.) To begin to doubt and waver in purposes; to become less confident or determined; to hesitate.
  • (v. t.) To cause to reel or totter.
  • (v. t.) To cause to doubt and waver; to make to hesitate; to make less steady or confident; to shock.
  • (v. t.) To arrange (a series of parts) on each side of a median line alternately, as the spokes of a wheel or the rivets of a boiler seam.
  • (n.) An unsteady movement of the body in walking or standing, as if one were about to fall; a reeling motion; vertigo; -- often in the plural; as, the stagger of a drunken man.
  • (n.) A disease of horses and other animals, attended by reeling, unsteady gait or sudden falling; as, parasitic staggers; appopletic or sleepy staggers.
  • (n.) Bewilderment; perplexity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Clinton lost the presidency and Democrats lost those seats, as Democrats suffered staggering defeats across two branches of government.
  • (2) On admission, neurological examination revealed staggering gait and the right cerebellar ataxia showing dysmetria and dysdiadochokinesis.
  • (3) These observations suggest that the inner dynein arms in Chlamydomonas axonemes are aligned not in a single straight row, but in a staggered row or two discrete rows.
  • (4) You’d be staggered by the number of dimwitted debutantes who stand for photos next to cakes iced with the famous double-C. You know how you wanted a Spider-Man cake when you were little, and your mum made you Spider-Man cake, and it was the happiest birthday of your life?
  • (5) There are rumours that this is the case again and I can't imagine what these people are thinking, it staggers me.
  • (6) Terminase, the DNA packaging enzyme of phage lambda, binds to lambda DNA at a site called cosB, and introduces staggered nicks at an adjacent site, cosN, to generate the cohesive ends of virion lambda DNA molecules.
  • (7) When allowance was made for specific pairing between extrahelical and helical domains, the so-called D-staggered (D = 670 A) alignment of molecules was preferred, as opposed to a nonstaggered, or nematic, alignment.
  • (8) Staggerer cerebellar cortex exhibits the greatest fluorescence with most terminals appearing as matted tangles adjacent cell bodies.
  • (9) Speaking about the forthcoming T-charge, Khan said: “It’s staggering that we live in a city where the air is so toxic that many of our children are growing up with lung problems.
  • (10) The metabolism of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in the CNS was investigated in four kinds of morphologically different ataxic mice; reeler, staggerer, weaver and Purkinje cell degeneration mutants, and in hypocerebellar mice experimentally produced by injection of cytosine arabinoside.
  • (11) The Saints, who started the day third in the table, went marching on thanks to their own swish play and some staggering defending by the visitors.
  • (12) The sliding splint-staples, generally two, are placed in staggered positions behind the sternum (11 cases--funnel chest) or in front of the sternum (2 cases--pigeon chest).
  • (13) water retention, depression, transient staggering and phlebitis).
  • (14) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yemen government ground forces and Saudi-led air strikes attack Houthi militias The blockade – which is also being enforced in the air and on land – has choked a fragile economy already staggering under the impact of a six-month civil conflict pitting Yemeni forces loyal to the President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now exiled in Riyadh, against Houthi rebels allied to his predecessor and rival, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
  • (15) Lucie Faucherre, junior policy analyst, Gender Equality and Women’s Rights OECD , Paris, France, @luciefaucherre Include youth voices: Today, young people under 30 make up a staggering 50% of our world’s population.
  • (16) The men's list was published in September and saw Johnny Depp on top with a staggering $75m in annual earnings.
  • (17) The staggering figure – one of the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and which begins on Wednesday in Iraq .
  • (18) The main symptom "incoordination" (ataxia, asynergy, paresis, paralysis) is used by us more precisely only in case of impairment of nervous system by neoplastic infiltrations and does not signify as possible symptoms of general physical weakness, for example faltering, staggering, tumbling or lameness.
  • (19) In the presence of Co+2 ion, the primer specificity is altered so that all forms of duplex DNA molecules can be labeled at their unique 3'-ends regardless of whether such ends are staggered or even.
  • (20) In examining two different sets of experiments, it is proposed that staggered joint interpolation is the underlying planning strategy.

Swagger


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To walk with a swaying motion; hence, to walk and act in a pompous, consequential manner.
  • (v. i.) To boast or brag noisily; to be ostentatiously proud or vainglorious; to bluster; to bully.
  • (v. t.) To bully.
  • (n.) The act or manner of a swaggerer.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There is a certain degree of swagger, a sudden interruption of panache, as Alan Moore enters the rather sterile Waterstones office where he has agreed to speak to me.
  • (2) From flood defences to Crossrail 2, corporation tax cuts to provision for people with disabilities , the risks of Brexit to £20m for Hull: this was a chancellor roaming the political landscape with undiminished swagger and not a hint of apology.
  • (3) Wenger had complained of a sinister media plot to brainwash Arsenal's home fans, as though they were easily led and swing in the breeze, but it all was sweetness and light as Aaron Ramsey continued his early season swagger.
  • (4) Such swagger would look naïve and unreflexive now, in a country assailed by anxiety about its own impotence in the world.
  • (5) Ratko Mladic, opening his defence in The Hague this week, has reason to understand the change in a way he did not when he was swaggering through the Bosnian killing fields.
  • (6) (This is not just swagger: Barton's brother Michael, after all, is currently serving a minimum of 17 years in prison for his part in the racially motivated murder of Anthony Walker in 2005.
  • (7) In an ideal world one of the candidates will swagger over to the other, as Al Gore did to George Bush in 2000.
  • (8) I am aware, too, that I associate tattoos on men with aggression, the kind of arrogant swagger that goes with vest tops, dogs on chains, broken beer glasses.
  • (9) Twin muses of Liam Gallagher and Jimi Hendrix added up to louche tailoring, flower prints and urban staples like a swagger-tastic Gallagher parka.
  • (10) A distinct swagger in his step became apparent as his career developed at Boro but right up until his appearance at Bradford crown court, there had been little evidence of a genuinely darker side to his nature.
  • (11) Lucky enough to catch him playing its songs at New York’s Ritz early in 1981, I was instantly won over by his thrilling talent and androgynous swagger.
  • (12) Cut to the elegant hotel corridor, Gimme Shelter screaming on the soundtrack, and Denzel emerges, swaggering and magnificent in full pilot's uniform, ready to go to work.
  • (13) The 22-year-old was outstanding, a swaggering, forceful presence who left City's players with little choice but to hack him down.
  • (14) Most important are the donors, who can usually be spotted by their swagger and the strong smell of cigar-smoke.
  • (15) Tottenham’s Denmark playmaker had not completed 90 minutes since 15 August, a knee injury hampering his early-season form, but two free-kick equalisers blew away the cobwebs here and ensured deserved parity for his team in a vibrant game characterised by swagger on the ball and defensive jitters off it.
  • (16) In Richard Moore’s book The Bolt Supremacy he describes the odd cocktail of bonhomie and saccharine that surrounded the sprinter’s swaggering conquest of London 2012.
  • (17) It is an assessment that continues to resonate, not just because of who it came from but also because it aptly encapsulates the swaggering brilliance of that Liverpool team, one which having crushed Forest went on to clinch the club's 17th league championship at a canter.
  • (18) Promoting Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp swaggered through the hall dressed as his character, Captain Jack Sparrow, as fans were told that Orlando Bloom’s character, Will Turner, will return for the fifth instalment of the franchise, Dead Men Tell No Tales, in 2017.
  • (19) Former Labour staffers, moderate refugees fleeing the hard-left takeover under Corbyn, sometimes bristled at what they saw as unmerited swagger in the step of the Downing Street contingent, who expected to easily replicate their victory in the previous May’s general election.
  • (20) But it also reflects US elite breast-beating about economic failure, the rise of China and a loss of global swagger since the Bush years.