This morning I heard on the radio a reference to "clothing optional vacations", which apparently extend to clothing-optional travel (or maybe I misunderstood!?!?). This is called, among the relevant population, a [ne:kenʃən], which is spelled nacation or nakation. This is not new (see here), just new to me.Staycation is a now very established blend and it's attested since at least 2003 (see wikipedia) and has spawned a day similar blends, like daycation. Interestingly, one variant is, according to Wikipedia:
The alternate naycation (nay + "vacation") has been used to signify total abstention from travel.I guess if the nekkid holiday version has encroached on this territory, that word failed, eh?
More importantly, staycation was on Lake Superior State's list of banned words last year (see again wikipedia). Man, it feels good to use those!
2 comments:
I stumbled upon your blog quite by accident and the first post I see is on blends, my thesis topic! Thanks for the -cations :) I've also seen breakation ('a vacation longer than a break but shorter than a proper vacation') and mancation ('men-only vacation, a vacation in which men engage in typical masculine sports or other activities', mentioned in American Dialect Society 2006 WOTY) but you probably already know these.
Oh, thank you. I was trying so hard to remember 'breakation' and couldn't come up with it. Yeah, a couple of our Team Verb folks were there for the ADS 'mancation' thing.
People love blends. When you finish the thesis, you could send us a guest post!
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