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July 8, 2008

Drinking the Staycation Haterade

This is the summer of the staycation, or so much of the media seems to think. High fuel prices are making people forgo that road trip or thousand-mile flight and instead spend some time at home, or visiting local attractions. That sounds perfectly okay to us—there's plenty of stuff in our hometown that we haven't gotten around to checking out—but can we please do away with the word "staycation"?

Staycation

On staycation. Via Morgan Frederick.

What does it even mean? It's not particularly evocative of anything. A good portmanteau, like haterade, can be used effectively in a sentence: "Someone's been drinking her haterade today." But what do you do with a staycation? You can't really go on a staycation, because, by definition, you are staying, and hence, not going. We suppose you can have a staycation, or maybe take one, but then why not just say you're taking a break, or some time off? We've stayed close to home during time off before and it never even crossed our mind that we were embarking on any kind of "-cation." We were just taking a few days off.

Staycation just doesn't seem to serve any particularly useful purpose, or capture any particular sentiment, aside from perhaps generating copycat stories. We've never actually heard anyone say it in conversation—and if we do, you know what we'll be drinking.

Related in Gelf: While we're at it, let's get rid of "mancation" as well.







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