Is it cooking or culinary holidays, vacations, tours:

It seems to be an ongoing argument this one - should we refer to a Cooking Holiday as a cooking holiday or a cooking vacation? From the various opinions I have gathered over the last eighteen months it would seem that it is only the UK that uses the term holiday in this context.

Apart from the UK it would seem that for the rest of the world a holiday is a special day like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc - although just to confuse the issue we would also refer to these days as holidays (which is where the word originates: Holy Day).

This debate about the correct meaning of these words would probably not have arisen before the advent of the internet. The internet is responsible for a lot all ready but one area I have not seen much discussion on is how it is changing the written word and word usage. Word usage is important to any business that has a web site because it is relevant words on the web page that will bring visitors to the web site via search engines like Google.

So if I want to promote "Cooking Holidays" outside the UK I must use the phrase "Cooking Vacations" but this then leaves me with a conundrum. If my web pages refer to "Cooking Vacations" then no-one in the UK is going to find my pages . . .

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From The Oxford Dictionary:

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Vacation :

part of year constituting fixed period of cessation from work (Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, long or summer vacation)

• Origin - Latin word vaccatio meaning to vacate

Holiday :

day of festivity or recreation, when no work is done.

• Origin - Holy Day

From The Oxford Thesaurus:

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Holiday :

Time off, break, recess, respite, leave (of absence), furlough, sabbatical
Festival, feast, celebration, fete, gala, fair, red-letter day, event

Vacation :

Holiday, leave, leisure, recess, respite, rest, sojourn