The days of labour may sometimes be thankless, but they need not be swankless. When you think you can no further swink, quick as a wink you can refill your tank with a little swank. It need not be such swagger as to set tongues a-wag; it can be just enough to put a swing in your step and sway your mood. The little luxuries can lift your life.
But how much swank do you need to make it swanky? Will you be sated with a simple embroidered hanky? A perfect martini? Or does proper swank require a whole swamp of swancour? Does it entail details on details? White-glove service, gold-plated flatware, velvet, brocade, Krug, Petrus? Is there a price cutoff? Or is swank in the eye of the beholder, or variable according to relative expectation?
Let’s say I want a swanky meal for my birthday. We can all agree that if I were to walk a few blocks to my nearest Michelin-starred restaurant, even if the décor is a bit simple, the sheer quality and price of the food would make it swanky. But let’s say instead that I walk to my local market and buy a pound of striploin and some Gorgonzola and some cream and take them home and (with the addition of ingredients already on the premises) make steak in a Gorgonzola cream sauce. Is that sufficiently swanky by definition, or do I need to spend a certain amount on the steak or verify a certain fat content in the cream? Do I need to serve it on our prettiest dishes, or can food be swanky even when served on the scuffed black plates we use every day?
You are of course entitled to your opinions, as I am to mine. But if my choices do not sway you, can I still truly consider them swanky? What if there is no swagger? No ostentation?
And, on the other hand, can anything be swanky if you do the right things? We can imagine that a hamburger can be swanky; I suspect grits and biscuits can be swanky with the right care and attention and expense. But can a hot dog? Can SPAM (outside of Korea)? Similarly, we know that opera is swanky by default, though you can mount a very unswanky production of it; but can a comic operetta or silly musical be swanky, or are they too demotic? Can there be swank in Gilbert and Sullivan?
The answer to that last question is, in fact, etymologically yes. You see, the librettist of the team was William Schwenck Gilbert, known to his familiars as “Schwenck.” That name was the surname of his great-aunt and great-uncle, and it is from the German verb schwenken, ‘swing, sway, swagger’. Which, it is thought, is from the same Old Germanic root as English swank, which originally meant ‘swagger, strut, behave ostentatiously’.
Swank has, certainly, evolved in sense to mean ‘fashionable, elegant, posh’ – but that’s not a very large change. And yes, swank doesn’t come directly from Schwenck. But consider this: There was a family, originally named Schwenk, who, after some time in England, modified their name, and some of them moved to America, and one of them was born in Nebraska in 1974 with that modified surname, and she grew up to be a movie star. Yes, I mean Hilary Swank. Whose name, therefore, not only sounds and looks like swank, not only is etymologically related to swank, but shows that this common Schwenk can, with but a touch of refinement, become Swank.
And so I will accept any touch of refinement. If we stay in a hotel with the plushest bathrobes I’ve ever worn, then that’s swanky regardless of the price (though let’s be honest, the price is probably swancorous). If we have take-out pizza for supper and open the priciest bottle of wine we have on hand to go with it, that is certainly not swankless. And you may, I think, allow yourself some little capricious luxury in your workspace, just a wink of swank while you work. I certainly will allow myself such perquisites (swanquisites?), swank you very much.
