Meanings
- uncountableA lifestyle of living in a vehicle, especially a van, full or part-time.
Vanlife is an aesthetic trend, closer to the tiny-home movement, yet even richer, lusher and typically sexier.
2020 July 3, Nellie Bowles, “The #Vanlife Business Is Booming”, in The New York Times, →ISSN1 more example
Vanlife is an aesthetic and a mentality and, people kept telling me, a “movement.” S. Lucas Valdes, the owner of the California-based company GoWesty, a prominent seller of Volkswagen-van parts, compared vanlife today to surfing a couple of decades ago.
2017 April 17, Rachel Monroe, “Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement”, in The New Yorker, retrieved 23 Aug 2021
Origin
From van + life, popularized on social media in the 2010s.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
vanlife. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vanlife
“vanlife.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vanlife. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “vanlife,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/vanlife.
Source: vanlife on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.