staycation

English

Etymology

Blend of stay +‎ vacation

Noun

staycation (plural staycations)

1. (neologism) A vacation spent close to home.
   • 2009: Nicholas Lezard, Down and out in London, a column in the New Statesman, 31^st August 2009 issue, page 54

     It’s holiday time again. Having invented the staycation – no, I don’t like the word either – four years ago when we ran out of money and out of patience with French traffic, we are sticking to principle and, as we did four months ago, hanging out at Tom Hodgkinson’s gaff in north Devon.

   • 2019 December 4, Paul Stephen, “At the heart of the local community”, in Rail, page 58:

     The rise in patronage partly reflects the growing trend for 'staycations' in the UK, in addition to Pitlochry's status as the southern gateway to the world-famous Cairngorms National Park.

Usage notes

• Seen as silly or derogatory in many cases, e.g., the traditional image of a child whose friends have all gone on trips during the summer while the child is stuck at home.

Derived terms

• staycate

Translations

vacation spent close to home

• Finnish: lähiloma
• French: restances f pl
• German: Urlaub in/auf Balkonien m
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Swedish: hemester (sv)

Verb

staycation (third-person singular simple present staycations, present participle staycationing, simple past and past participle staycationed)

1. (neologism, intransitive) To spend a vacation close to home.
   • 2008, Peter D. Schiff, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets (page 196)

     They may fill some of the airline seats and hotel rooms left vacant by staycationing locals.

Further reading

Wikinews

• “staycation”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “staycation”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.