Not sure how or why, and not wanting to read too much into this one, but it just so happens that several of my closest friends, neighbors, and family have all been eagerly anticipating and planning their last minute summer staycations. This was a new word for me, but I immediately liked it. It hinted at a renewed and redoubled faith in basic humanity. I dropped in on Wikipedia, and learned at least this much: ‘A staycation is a designated period of time in which a human individual or group remains staunchly inside the home with the possible exception of brief excursions within the immediate area, such as to local historical sites, carnivals, parks, ice-cream parlours, swimming venues, movie theaters, video arcades, wilderness areas, strip malls, etc, or engagement in low-impact recreational and/or leisure activities such as frisbee, hide-and-go-seek, horseback riding, spelunking, sketching, playing fetch with the dog, hula-hooping, lawn darts, kite-flying, sculpting with Play-Doh, TV watching, or whittling. Staycationers typically wear their usual clothes, eat their usual foods, and sleep in their own beds at night. They may or may not maintain phone/internet contact. Some staycationers do very little or nothing, focusing primarily on much-needed or much-desired R&R (rest and relaxation).’ The picture attached to the article is of a group of miscellaneous people immersed in a kiddie pool situated in what appears to be a stereotypical backyard/patio area. Two of them have cold drinks in hand, two are wearing paper party hats, one has a banana peel on his head, and one appears to be playing a song on kazoo. Among the related articles to staycation was a list entitled ‘types of tourism’, such as sacred travel, safari, river cruise, whale watching, genealogy questing, timeshares, bookstore hopping, guest ranch, bicycle pilgrimages, couchsurfing, spacetime warping, and competitive eating events. For you word-freaks out there there was also a brief section on the etymology of ‘staycation.’ It is a portmanteau of ‘stay’ and ‘vacation.’ The term ‘daycation’ is also sometimes used. The blog Wordspy attributes the earliest reference to this term as coming from a 2003 speech by Ross Perot. It was added with much fanfare to the 2009 edition of the Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary. A closely related concept and term is ‘nearcation’, which is taking a vacation to a location relatively close to home, although it remains unclear how far away a destination needs to be until it moves beyond the realm of a stay or nearcation and becomes a bona fide or full-on vacation. The variant ‘naycation’ is sometimes used to signify total abstention from travel. https://youtube/watch?v=oFTHzLB3x2c
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 19:51:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015