nostalgia
Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for a time or a place from one’s own past, felt with pleasure as well as with loss.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- A sentimental longing for a period or a place from one’s past.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Originally, a medical condition of severe homesickness.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Examples
- The smell of cut grass fills him with nostalgia for childhood summers.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - There is a whole nostalgia industry built on old television.
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Usage
Nostalgia is slightly literary and appears most often in writing about culture, music, design and politics, where it names a mood shared by a generation. In speech it is common but usually signals a softer feeling than longing, and it often comes with a smile rather than with grief. The adjective nostalgic is far more common in conversation than the noun, as in I feel nostalgic about that summer.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)The noun is uncountable when it names the feeling as a whole: a wave of nostalgia, pure nostalgia, a strong sense of nostalgia. Before what is missed it takes for, as in nostalgia for the old town or nostalgia for a childhood that never quite existed, and it can stand before another noun as a modifier, the nostalgia industry, a nostalgia trip. The verbs around it are feel, evoke, trigger and wallow in.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Nostalgia is not the same as homesickness, although the words share a history. Homesickness is the distress of being away from home now, while nostalgia can be felt at home, about a time that has gone. The common error is to use nostalgia for any fondness for the present, as when someone says they feel nostalgic about a place they are still living in.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Word forms
Regular forms according to English morphology (editorial description).
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | nostalgia |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- a wave of nostalgia
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - nostalgia for
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - pure nostalgia
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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J. Hofer, Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, Basel 1688, open sourceRelated words
- nostalgic , adjective
Related entries
Questions and answers
What does nostalgia mean?
Nostalgia names a fond, slightly aching memory of something in one’s own history, whether a stretch of years or a particular town. The pleasure of recalling it is mixed with the awareness that it is out of reach. The word began as a medical label for crippling homesickness and only later moved towards this softer everyday sense.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Is nostalgia countable?
In the main sense it is uncountable: a wave of nostalgia, a hint of nostalgia, pure nostalgia. The plural nostalgias exists but seldom earns its place, appearing when separate kinds or episodes are counted, as in the competing nostalgias of two generations. Ordinary writing rarely needs it.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)What is the difference between nostalgia and homesickness?
Homesickness is what someone feels while away from home and wants to return, whereas nostalgia is directed at a past that cannot be returned to. Nostalgia can therefore be felt in one’s own house. The two words are related in origin, since nostalgia began as the medical name for severe homesickness.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Where does the word nostalgia come from?
The name was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss physician, in a Basel dissertation devoted to the condition. He built it from nostos, the Greek word for a homecoming, and algos, Greek for pain, and applied it to Swiss soldiers serving abroad. Webster in 1913 still treated it as a medical diagnosis.