''Scientific wild-ass guess'' (SWAG) is an

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

slang term meaning a rough estimate made by an expert in the field, based on experience and intuition. It is similar to the slang word ''

guesstimate ''Guesstimate'' is an informal English portmanteau of ''guess'' and ''estimate'', first used by American statisticians in 1934 or 1935.portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsArmy An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

or the

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...

. Journalist

Melvin J. Lasky Melvin Jonah Lasky (15 January 1920 – 19 May 2004) was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He founded the German journal '' Der Monat'' in 1948 and, from 1958 to 1991, edited ''Encounter'', one of many ...

wrote that it was first used casually by US Army General

William Westmoreland William Childs Westmoreland (March 26, 1914 – July 18, 2005) was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from ...

during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

. Westmoreland would sometimes reply "SWAG" to reporters' questions about American failure to neutralize the enemy. Westmoreland's use of the term was affirmed in court by Colonel John Frank Stewart in November 1984 during witness testimony for the lawsuit initiated by Westmoreland against CBS for their TV documentary '' The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception''. On the witness stand, Stewart explained that in Vietnam, the military intelligence branch that he commanded would deliver numbers of enemy strength to Westmoreland, the numbers derived from "the SWAG principle". There was laughter in the court when Stewart explained what was meant by the acronym ''SWAG''. An earlier use of term is mentioned by linguist J. Robert Dumouchel who wrote the 1975 book, ''Dictionary of Development Terminology''. Dumouchel says he first encountered SWAG "in the vernacular of community development" in the US in the 1960s. Regardless of its origin, the term gained greater prominence in the first half of 1999 in connection with the

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from 24 March 1999 to 10 June 1999. The bombings continued until an a ...

. Reporter

John F. Harris John F. Harris is an American political journalist and the co-founder of ''Politico'', an Arlington, Virginia-based political news organization. With former partner Jim VandeHei, Harris founded ''Politico'' on January 23, 2007, and served as ed ...

of ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' was the first person to put the term into a newspaper article. Describing the factors that led to President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

relying on the US Air Force in Kosovo instead of employing "200,000 NATO troops", Harris wrote that NATO's estimate requiring 200,000 ground troops was regarded by American war planners as politically impossible to achieve; it was quickly removed from consideration. "NATO's analysis, officials said, was not a comprehensive study. Instead, it was an initial review that some officials called a 'SWAG'—military parlance for a 'scientific wild-ass guess.'"

Use

SWAG is used to describe an estimate derived from a combination of factors including past experience, general impressions, and

heuristic A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, ...

or approximate calculations rather than an

exhaustive search In computer science, brute-force search or exhaustive search, also known as generate and test, is a very general problem-solving technique and algorithmic paradigm that consists of systematically enumerating all possible candidates for the soluti ...

, proof, or rigorous calculation. The SWAG is an educated guess but is not regarded as the best or most accurate estimate. The SWAG is not computed or proven rigorously, but the proponent asserts his or her own judgement suffices to rationalize the estimate; and it may, in time, be viable to produce a rigorous forecast of increased precision. Various other

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

s of ''SWAG'' have been published, including "sophisticated wild-ass guess", "Silly Wild-Ass Guess", "Semi-Wild-Ass Guess", "Stupid Wild-Ass Guess", and "Scientific Wildly Aimed Guess". "Scientific" implies that the "guess" can be justified if necessary or cost-effective. A guess of lesser worth may be called the "Wild-Ass Guess" or "WAG". A slightly better estimate may be called " Back of the Envelope" (BOTE).

References

External links

* {{Wiktionary-inline, SWAG Acronyms Hypotheses Informal estimation American slang

Use

See also

References

External links