Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
- n. The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Morbid longing to return to one's home or native country; homesickness, especially in its severe forms, producing derangement of mental and physical functions.
Wiktionary
- n. A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness.
- n. A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.
- n. Reminiscence of the speaker's childhood or younger years.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.
- n. A sentimental yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time.
WordNet 3.0
- n. longing for something past
Etymologies
- From Late Latin nostalgia, from Ancient Greek * νοσταλγία (nostalgia), from νόστος (nostos, "a return home") + ἄλγος (algos, "pain, suffering"). Compare Italian nostalgia and French nostalgie. (Wiktionary)
- Greek nostos, a return home; see nes-1 in Indo-European roots + -algia. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“While acknowledging that indulging in nostalgia is itself a separate realm of lameness, let me ask, Which is lamer: being too young to remember a given period and then getting the nostalgia wrong, or not being too young but having been so out of touch with popular culture that subsequent attempts at nostalgia are woefully inaccurate?”
“As the descriptions of Brewer, that "torpid hive," or any look at Updike's writings would suggest, this nostalgia is inevitably complicated by darker realities.”
“The nostalgia is unconscious, flickering through only in the shape of a lone apricot tree on an embankment, so foreign in Berlin's northern latitudes.”
“Glenn Beck and the Tea Party represent a very vocal minority, so worked up about the direction of our nation that they'll pour into Washington by the hundreds of thousands to worship at the feet of a religious revivalism rooted in nostalgia for a white-washed version of America that never was.”
The Huffington Post: Sally Kohn: One Nation March: Sometimes Size Doesn't Matter
“Jellied Cranberry Sauce has a certain nostalgia to it because the can-shaped log of clear cranberry juice made an appearance of many of our Thanksgiving tables growing up.”
“I think nostalgia is a profound emotion that's all too often dismissed unfairly.”
“But in its purest forms, I think nostalgia is to the emotions what idealism is to the intellect.”
“Even in nostalgia and regret, the voice is neither sentimental nor self-absorbed.”
Manhood for Amateurs: Summary and book reviews of Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon.
“Kenyonf, your nostalgia is for a time that never existed.”
“Still, his nostalgia is mixed with anticipation: I'll be quite excited by finishing.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nostalgia’.
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@vcb.etym.prjct - SAT WORD DUMP - as ...
The words on this list SAT regulars that I haven't sorted and grouped yet. It's like my wordy holding pen. get it? holding the pen to write a word? HA! I love how lame my humor is.
iconoclast, glacial, agnostic, histrionic, treacly, contemptuous, captious, bombastic, bombast, perfidy, quiescence, sordid and 148 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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Naresh_Special
portent, organically, malicious, sham, olfactory, vertebrates, protuberance, sensilla, flagitious, pleonastic, exiguous, wayward and 102 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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N
letters starting with n
nadir, naive, narcissist, nascent, natation, natty, nauseate, nautical, nebulous, necromancy, nefarious, negate and 24 more...
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It Hurts When I Do This
Pain words. Ouch!
gonyalgia, neuralgia, cephalalgia, nephralgia, adenalgia, aerodontalgia, arthralgia, arthroneuralgia, brachialgia, cardialgia, causalgia, cœlialgia and 63 more...
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random
good words that i think of at random times.
billow, microcosm, inertia, ecstatic, zesty, secure, amicable, tedious, free, nostalgia, halo, clean and 12 more...
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Words you were amazed to hear in a song
Amazed… or awestruck.
You might want to leave a comment with title and artist somewhere. Thanks.fuligin, lictor, slither, heinous, stigma, penance, conciliation, Urth, lino, acquiesce, halo halo, bo peep and 62 more...
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My Favorite Words(:
These are all the words I LOVE! Some are real, some are made up, some are different languages. But I love em' all just the same!
sheath, spectacular, spectabulousarific, lovely, hola, silly, rice, nostalgia, lemons, jargon, strucken, perpendicular and 11 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 2455 more... -
Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3063 more... -
Flutter
tuberose, golden apple, apple cider, unicorn, extraordinary, Pleiades, Merope, speckle, glitter, rose, pitter-pat, whale and 314 more...
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Out of Book Words
commiserate, equanimity, dulcet, cursory, diffident, profligate, egregious, precocious, dissemble, aggregate, efficacy, ingenuous and 100 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nostalgia.
marky This is my word of the week. Nostalgia Feb 3, 2010
frindley Nostalgia is: looking fondly over my old Wordie lists. Jan 28, 2010
kewpid Mr. Draper may be wrong, but he knows how to pluck at the heartstrings:
Carousel
Nov 11, 2008
qroqqa Kundera 1, Draper 0. Greek nostos "return, homeward journey", related to nosteô "go home, come home", and ne-, nei- "go, come" (with regular omission of medial /s/). First used in English (1756) as a translation of German Heimweh; the English 'homesickness' was also first used in this translation. Aug 5, 2008
leforet “In Greek ‘nostalgia’ literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’ It’s a twing in your heart far more powerful than memory alone�?
— Don Draper Aug 5, 2008
sonofgroucho Ain't what it used to be. Sep 30, 2007
peacoat From the Greek nostos meaning return, and algos meaning suffering. "The suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return." --Milan Kundera, Ignorance Dec 8, 2006