One of the reasons why it is impossible to count the words in English (see here) is that you can keep adding prefixes and suffixes to existing words to form new words. Staycation was coined in about 2003 and is a blend of 'stay' and 'vacation' ie stay at home and go to local parks, beaches etc instead of going away on holiday. Because of the economic situation, more and more people are staying at home, and the word staycation is seen all over the place. Here are a few headlines from today's papers:
Financial Times: Retailers reap benefits of 'staycations'
Daily Telegraph: Official figures confirm 'staycation' summer
The Guardian: Recession-hit Britons abandon foreign holidays in favour of 'staycations'.
Note how the word is usually put in quotation marks, to indicate that it is still seen as new.
A typical English suffix is -er; it indicates an agent-noun, or the person doing the action. So we are now seeing 'staycationer' and 'staycationers'. 'Staycationing' has also appeared as a noun (see here, for instance).
Daycation is now appearing in the American press (not yet in the British papers) as is naycation (ie not going anywhere). The Urban Dictionary has staygaytion, which means staying at home and watching gay films.
I like this game.
Praycation - a holiday you couldn't afford but achieved with the help of divine intervention
Nowaycation - the reaction of a teenager to a suggested holiday with parents
Maycation - a holiday one might or might not take
Hurrahcation - the moment you arrive on holiday/the moment you arrive back home (depending on the success of the holiday)
Posted by: Fran | August 15, 2009 at 09:56 AM