Anemoia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known. neologism, uncommon, uncountable
"Yet, from reboots to genre revivals, nostalgia remains a powerful force in pop culture. So does an associated phenomenon, called anemoia, which is essentially nostalgia for a past you’ve never experienced. Nostalgia and anemoia have been Broadway’s bread and butter for decades."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Yet, from reboots to genre revivals, nostalgia remains a powerful force in pop culture. So does an associated phenomenon, called anemoia, which is essentially nostalgia for a past you’ve never experienced. Nostalgia and anemoia have been Broadway’s bread and butter for decades."
Etymology
Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words. Constructed from Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos, “wind”) + νόος (nóos, “mind”), with reference to anemosis, the warping of a tree by high wind "until it seems to bend backward."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.