nostalgia - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From New Latin nostalgia, coined by Johannes Hofer in 1688 from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”), calquing German Heimweh.[1] Ancient Greek *νοσταλγία (*nostalgía) is unattested. Transferred sense probably influenced by French nostalgie, especially in literature.[2]

Compare Italian nostalgia, Spanish nostalgia, Portuguese nostalgia and French nostalgie.

nostalgia (countable and uncountable, plural nostalgias)

  1. (now uncommon) A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness. [from 18th c.]
    Seeing food at camp similar to his mother's cooking sent a wave of nostalgia through him.
  2. (transferred sense) A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past. [from 20th c.]
    an alumnus' feelings of nostalgia for his/her years in high school
    • 2013 August 16, Oliver Burkeman, “This is the cutest article”, in The Guardian Weekly‎[1], volume 189, number 10, page 20:
      I can't have been the only person, last week, to feel a rush of nostalgia upon learning that Thames Water had removed a bus-sized, 15-tonne lump of food fat ("mixed with wet wipes") from the sewers under London. The fatberg was an August news story redolent of the old-fashioned silly season.
    • 2020 September 9, Priya Elan, “Now-stalgia: why fashion is going back to the future”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:
      […] Rousteing asked: “Is my generation’s nostalgia for our turn-of-the-century childhood culture somehow less cool than fashion’s more familiar fixation on the 70s and 80s?” The answer was a firm “no”: in 2020 all nostalgia is good nostalgia. “The nostalgia economy”, as named by Quartz, is the most powerful trend in fashion since florals or trousers and is a reaction to what’s happening in the world.
    • 2022 November 15, Dan Hancox, “‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain today”, in The Guardian‎[3]:
      Though there is nothing generationally unique in the desire to bask in the banalities of your past, these nostalgia communities have flourished on Facebook as its user base has grown ever older in the past decade.
    • 2024 May 21, Matthew Reisz, “Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion by Agnes Arnold-Foster review – the past isn’t a foreign place”, in The Guardian‎[4], →ISSN:
      Yet it continued to be treated as rather suspect. In the mid-20th century, a psychoanalyst called Nandor Fodor dismissed nostalgia, along with utopian politics and even the vogue for Tarzan films, as “the manifestation of a latent desire to return to the womb”.
    • 2025 November 12, 'Mystery Shopper', “Is Devon the cream of the crop?”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 48:
      Many of the stations, some of which are request stops, still have their original LSWR buildings. All are now private homes, but it oozes nostalgia (which I like).
    • 2026 January 21, Patrick Wintour, “Middle powers assemble? Trump disorder prompts talk of new liberal alliances”, in The Guardian‎[5], →ISSN:
      [Mark] Carney, perhaps the most articulate of those giving voice to this sentiment, vowed he would no longer live in a state of nostalgia, waiting for an old world to return.

longing for home or familiar surroundings — see homesickness

bittersweet yearning for the things of the past

  1. ^ Johannes Hofer (1688), Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, oder Heimwehe (in Latin), Basel: Johann Jakob Harder, →DOI: “Neque verò denomine deliberanti convenientuis occurrit, remque explicandam præciſius deſignans, quam Noſtalgias vocabulum, origine græcum, & quidem duabus ex vocibus compoſitum, quorum alterum Νόστος Reditum in Patriam, alterum Ἄλγος dolorem aut triſtitiam ſignificat: […]”
  2. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “nostalgia”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

From New Latin nostalgia, coined from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”).

nostalgia

  1. nostalgia

Borrowed from English nostalgia.

nostalgia (plural **nostalgia-nostalgia)

  1. nostalgia

Borrowed from New Latin nostalgia, coined from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”).

nostalgia f (plural nostalgie)

  1. nostalgia, homesickness, longing
  1. ^ nostalgia in Bruno Migliorini et al., Dizionario d'ortografia e di pronunzia, Rai Eri, 2025
  2. ^ nostalgia in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Borrowed from English nostalgia.

nostalgia (Jawi spelling نوستلݢيا, plural **nostalgia-nostalgia or **nostalgia2)

  1. nostalgia

Borrowed from French nostalgie, from New Latin nostalgia, from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos) + ἄλγος (álgos).

nostalgia f

  1. nostalgia (yearning for the past)

From New Latin nostalgia, coined from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”).

Cognate with Galician nostalxia.

nostalgia f (plural nostalgias)

  1. nostalgia (yearning for the past)

Borrowed from New Latin nostalgia, coined from Ancient Greek νόστος (nóstos, “returning home”) + ἄλγος (álgos, “pain”).

nostalgia f (plural nostalgias)

  1. nostalgia
    Synonym: añoranza