Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(mainly teen) a fraud, a hoax, a disappointment.

1909		L.A. Herald 22 Apr. 11/4: [from Tit-Bits (UK)] ‘Jimmy Simpk’ns [...] tell me only the other day that every time ’e takes a dose o’ cod liver oil ’is ol’ woman puts a penny in ’is money box. ’E must be gettin’ rich.’ ‘No, I ain’t! [...] W’y, I’ve found out it’s all a swiz! When it gets ter ’arf a crown, she takes it out and buys anuvver bottle.
1909		Capricornian (Rockhampton) 10 Apr. 8/2: ‘W’y, I’ve found out it’s all a swiz! When it gete to ’arf-a-crown, she takes it out and buys anuvver bottle!’.
1911		Dly News (Perth) 24 May 7/2: ‘There’s only likely to be one sort of ending, unless all this man-and-maiden business is a regular swiz’.
1915		W. Owen letter 19 Mar. in Coll. Letters (1988) 328: What a swizz about Harold.
1921		V. Brittain letter Nov. in Testament of Youth (1933) x 513: What a swiz for all the people who swore that there was nothing in it between Ramage and Cathleen Nesbitt.
1925		Teleg. (Brisbane) 26 Mar. 7/4: ‘It’s a beastly swizz,’ observed Mr. Smith, ‘that the masters should have it all their own way and should be allowed to hold up to public ridicule the mistakes of our members’ .
1926		Chron. (Adelaide) 25 Dec. 62/1: ‘They’ll make me a girl as usual. I look rather like you then, old dear! - It was a swiz that you couldn’t come down and see me at the breaking-up’ .
1931		Wkly Times (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 35/4: Disgusted small Boy (at vicarage Christmas dinner, to vicar, on discovering threepenny-bit in pudding): ‘I say, Uncle, what a swizz! This is the threepenny-bit with a hole in it I gave you in the collection last Sunday!’ .
1932		G. Clark Mistress 186: They want us to go lunch. Just round the corner here [...] Bit of a swiz, isn’t it? I did my best to get out of it [OED].
1945		Aus. Women’s Wkly 14 Apr. 5/5: ‘Isn’t it funny?’ Midge said, rather trembly. ‘We’re going away.’ Then she remembered. ‘What a swizz, darling,’ she said.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross Of Love And Hunger 37: And the whole thing turns out a swizz. I’m furious.
1949		Western Dly Press 4 June 8/2: It’s a blooming swizzle.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 12: Actually it was a rotten swizzle, sir, because we flew through low cloud and we couldn’t see a thing.
1951		A. Buckeridge Jennings Follows a Clue (1967) 15: I know it’s a swizz.
1953		Sydney Morn. Herald 21 Apr. 9/5: ‘It was a fraud - a complete swizz,’ intoned a tiny pixie with a blonde doughnut perched on the back of her head.
1960		R.M. Muir Word for Word 182: He’s in a good swizz.
1966		B. Reckord Skyvers I ii: It was a rotten swiz we paid twelve and six for that time. Why don’t we try for a quid.
1973		A. Buckeridge Speaking of Jennings (1989) 78: I think it’s an absolute swizzle.
1981		Guardian 24 June 11/6: I don’t like doing plays for very few people — I think it’s a bit of a swiz.
1986		F. Pitt-Kethley Sky Ray Lolly 33: If I hadn’t bought a hammer or a chisel / As changeable, I’d think it was a swizzle.
1988		Canberra Times (ACT) 7 Apr. 11/3: It is indeed as though Burrowes is saying, ‘The city mugs who pay to see it will think it tells a real story about real people.’ Well, they shouldn’t, because it doesn’t. And in the final analysis, the horse work, Lovick notwithstanding, is hardly any less a swiz.
1993		(con. 1925) W. Woodruff Road to Nab End (2003) 198: Gordon considered the sideshows of freaks and caged wild animals a real ‘swiz’ so we avoided them.
2000		Indep. Traveller 26 Feb. 12: A collection of photographs purporting to show the view from the top of the wheel – is a swizz.