Conspicuous leisure is a term introduced by the American economist Thorstein Veblen, in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). The term denotes visible leisure for the sake of displaying social status. The term is generally reserved for those forms of leisure that seem to be fully motivated by social factors, such as taking long vacations to exotic places and bringing souvenirs back. Conspicuous leisure is a symptom observed in individuals in all societies where stratification exists. Veblen's more well-known "conspicuous consumption" is a type of conspicuous leisure.
Veblen argued that conspicuous leisure had deep historical roots reaching back into prehistory, and that it "evolved" into different forms as time passed. One example he gave was how, during the Middle Ages, the nobility was exempted from manual labor, which was reserved for serfs.
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