Akademik

n.

A period of joblessness that a person uses for leisure and other fun activities.

—funemploy v.

A growing group of jobless across the nation are joining a self-proclaimed movement: 'funemployment.' It's a group of jovial unemployed who say they're finally doing what they've always wanted to do — whether it is blogging or starting a nonprofit.

—Elizabeth Prann, " The Happy Unemployed: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/07/18/the-happy-unemployed/," Liveshots (Fox News), July 18, 2010

For the record, Dustin approaches his sundry temp jobs, which range from children's party clown to ice sculpture apprentice, with energy and enthusiasm...He's also quite content to take "funemployment" to heart. He enjoys having the leisure time to wage water balloon wars with the neighborhood kids and bask in the glow of the family's big-screen TV.

—Karen D'Souza, "Dustin': a comic-strip antihero for our recessionary times," San Jose Mercury News, March 19, 2010

funemployment—a happy time in one's life when one is not employed and is not wanting to be employed.

—JBMason, " funemployment: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=funemployment," Urban Dictionary, March 17, 2004

There is also a sketch-comedy group called Funemployment (earliest citation: 2003), as well as a much earlier use (from 1991) of funemployment that appears as a heading: http://books.google.com/books?id=CR4nAQAAIAAJ&q=%22funemployment% in volume 300 of Punch.

I would like to suggest an alternate, and clearly more obscure definition, where “funemployment” is used to describe those moments of actual on-the-job fun. This is a perhaps an even more radical use of the term, which explains something.This is probably one of those rare times where I've seen the word 'fun' juxtaposed with 'employment'. I like the fact that the definitions can be open-ended.