6. Staycation

Louise Ma
This term, which refers to a vacation taken at home or within a short drive, became popular during the '08 summer travel season when rising fuel prices made plane tickets or long road trips prohibitively expensive for many people. (Oil prices hit a record high of $147 a barrel in July, and gas prices approached $5 a gallon in some places.) Another buzzword tied to high gas prices: "hypermiling", the attempt to maximize gas mileage by doing such things as avoiding hills and never letting your car idle.
TIME parses the top buzzwords of 2008:

Cartoons of the Week
Who Will Inherit Joel Stein's Kid?
The Weekly Acoustic News
Asterix at 50: The Comic Hero Conquers the World
Photos: Silvio Berlusconi and the Politics of Sex
Pictures of the Week
Short List: TIME's Weekly Critics' Picks
Piecing Together Nabokov's Last Novel
Photos: Peru's Sacred Glacier Is Melting
New Moon Review: Team Jacob Ascending