vacation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation, especially one with pay granted to an employee.
• noun A holiday.
• noun A fixed period of holidays, especially one during which a school, court, or business suspends activities.
• noun The act or an instance of vacating.
• intransitive verb To take or spend a vacation.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of vacating.
• noun A space of time, or a condition, in which there is an intermission of a stated employment or procedure; a stated interval in a round of duties; a holiday.
• noun Specifically— In law, temporary cessation of judicial proceedings; the space of time between the end of one term of court and the beginning of the next; the period during which a court holds no sessions; recess; non-term. In England the vacations are—Christmas vacation, commencing on December 24th and ending January 6th; Easter vacation, commencing on Good Friday and ending on Easter Tuesday; Whitsun vacation, commencing on the Saturday before and ending on the Tuesday after Whitsunday; and the long vacation, commencing on August 13th and ending on October 23d.
• noun The intermission of the regular studies of an educational institution of any kind, when the students have a recess; holidays: as, the summer vacation.
• noun The act of becoming vacant; avoidance: said especially of a see or other spiritual dignity.
• noun Freedom from duty; leisure time.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of vacating; a making void or of no force.
• noun Intermission of a stated employment, procedure, or office; a period of intermission; rest; leisure.
• noun (Law) Intermission of judicial proceedings; the space of time between the end of one term and the beginning of the next; nonterm; recess.
• noun A period of intermission of regular paid work or employment, or of studies and exercises at an educational institution; the time during which a person temporarily ceases regular duties of any kind and performs other activites, usually some form of liesure; holidays; recess (at a school). Vacation is typically used for rest, travel, or recreation, but may be used for any purpose. In Britain this sense of vacation is usually referred to as holiday.
• noun (Eccl.) The time when an office is vacant

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun US (law) the act of making legally void.
• verb intransitive To spend or take a vacation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of making something legally void
• verb spend or take a vacation
• noun leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure