Nostalgia

//nɒˈstæld͡ʒə// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness. countable, uncommon, uncountable

    "Seeing food at camp similar to his mother's cooking sent a wave of nostalgia through him."

  2. 2
    longing for something past wordnet
  3. 3
    A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past. countable, uncountable

    "an alumnus' feelings of nostalgia for his/her years in high school"

Synonyms

All synonyms
achingbathosbleeding heartcloyingnessdaydreamdaydreaming

Example

More examples

"Tom loves the nostalgia of listening to hit songs from his youth."

Etymology

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

Related phrases

Yugo-nostalgiablinded by nostalgianostalgia gogglesretro-nostalgiahalcyon dayshark backmemory lane

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.