swagger

Here we have a gait, cocky and self-assured, legs thrown forward with reckless abandon, the body catching up reluctantly, as if embarrassed to be transported so ridiculously. For a walk to be correctly dubbed a "swagger," it helps that it be accompanied by an appropriately confident (perhaps even smug) facial expression; the swagger and the pout, for instance, are mutually exclusive. A single raised eyebrow helps. Cowboys, when they are not moseying, often swagger, as knights once did, when they were not strutting. The word is appropriate for its meaning: it sounds as if someone made it up on the spot, putting a couple of sounds together that stuck merely because they were pronounced so authoritatively by that first brave soul.

Sidenote: Apologies for the two days without words. I assure you the delay was not from any idleness on my part, but rather a result of an internet outage. Today I will catch up.