Vacation

How to spell vacation

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vacation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vacation mean?

1. nounAn extended period of leisure away from work or study, often involving travel.
2. verbTo take a holiday or spend time away from work or home for leisure.

Vacation in a sentence

• noun

  The family booked a two-week vacation on the coast.

• verb

  They like to vacation in the mountains every August.

• noun

  She saved for a year to afford a summer vacation abroad.

• verb

  Many retirees vacation along the southern coast each winter.

Where does vacation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin vacatio, meaning 'freedom' or 'a being free from duty', which was built on the verb vacare, literally 'to be empty' or 'to be unoccupied'. The same vacare root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'vacant', 'vacuum', and 'evacuate', all of which carry the underlying idea of emptiness. English took the word in through Old French in the late 1300s, where it first meant a release or exemption from an obligation, especially a break in legal or academic terms when courts and universities stood empty. Over time the sense narrowed to a stretch of time set aside from work or study, and by the nineteenth century, particularly in American use, it came to mean a leisure trip or holiday. The spelling keeps that single c and the -ation ending intact, a reminder that the heart of the word is simply 'vacare', to be free.

How the word is built

• vac- (from vacare: to be empty or free)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)