What Is a swivet ?

People have been in a swivet over one thing or another since the 1890s. That, at least, is when the word first appeared in print in a collection of "Peculiar Words and Usages" of Kentucky published by the American Dialect Society. In the ensuing years, "swivet" popped up in other pockets of the South as well. Chances are it had already been around for some time before it was recorded in writing, and by the time it was, nobody could say where or how it had originated. What we do know is that its use gradually spread, so that by the 1950s it was regularly appearing in national magazines like Time and The New Yorker. Thus, it entered the mainstream of American English.