Akademik

n.

A vacation in which the participants are all men. Also: man-cation. [Blend of man and vacation.]

—mancationer n.

—mancationing pp.

When fellow travelers saw Larry Meadows and his buddies palling around on vacation, they assumed they all worked together. Wrong. Or that they were all friends from the same town. Wrong. Or that they were in some special club. Wrong again.

"I'd tell them we're on a 'mancation," Meadows said jokingly. "That kind of clicked with people."

A lot of people.

Without realizing it, Meadows and his friends — Bill, Paul and Chris, who have taken a yearly vacation together, just the boys, since 2002 — have been part of a growing trend in the travel industry toward getaways for guys. Meadows, who lives in Tampa, Fla., likes to think he and his fellow mancationers coined the term (they registered the site www.mancation.com: http://www.mancation.com/ to share their vacation stories and help others plan their own mancations), which is now a buzzword in the travel business.

—Greg Morago, "Boys Gone Wild," The Hartford Courant, December 31, 2006

Luxury hotels now offer mancation packages like the $49,000, three-night bacchanal in Las Vegas for four guys that includes gambling chips, access to a Ferrari 360 Spider, and other accoutrements of the insecure male.

Other hotels sell less expensive mancations that feature spas and waxing. One Florida resort offers men "ritual baths."

Buddies on vacation don't go to spas. And, unless they're ancient Druids getting in touch with their inner shaman, they don't group-bathe, either.

—Alfred Lubrano, "These are no trips for manly men," The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 13, 2007

"THE BREAK-UP"

* Plot: Gary (Vince Vaughn) and Brooke (Jennifer Aniston) relocate to Splitsville, but neither will move out of the condo they share. Humorous mind games ensue to force each other out.

* Preview: Very funny, but in a heavily guy-humor way ("man-cation," a bad rendition of "Owner of a Lonely Heart"). Waxing jokes (so "40-Year-Old Virgin") wouldn't seem to lure women.

—Nick Rogers, "Super summer," The State Journal-Register, May 4, 2006

This term's popularity stems from its appearance in the movie "The Break-Up," which was released on June 2, 2006. It was in the linguistic wind before that, however. The domain name mancation.com was registered on August 26, 2003. Note, too, that the term was added to Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mancation on March 31, 2006. The entry includes this priceless sample sentence:

Hey bro, my girl is buggin.....Let's plan mancation in Vegas and get stupid retard like we're riding the yellow bus.

—SB, "Mancation," Urban Dictionary, March 31, 2006

manflu