nostalgia meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

nostalgia

noun

UK /nɒˈstæld͡ʒə/ · US /nɑˈstæld͡ʒə/

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.

Uncommon A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness.

Seeing food at camp similar to his mother's cooking sent a wave of nostalgia through him.
I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not.1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter L, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.

Transferred sense

an alumnus' feelings of nostalgia for his/her years in high school
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.2013 August 16, Oliver Burkeman, “This is the cutest article”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 20:

4 more examples

[…]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.2020 September 9, Priya Elan, “Now-stalgia: why fashion is going back to the future”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
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.2022 November 15, Dan Hancox, “‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain today”, in The Guardian:
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”.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, →ISSN:
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).2025 November 12, 'Mystery Shopper', “Is Devon the cream of the crop?”, in RAIL, number 1048, page 48:

Derived terms: blinded by nostalgia, Eastalgia, fauxstalgia, nostalgia goggles, nostalgic, nostalgically, nostalgise, nostalgism, nostalgist, nostalgize, nowstalgia, retro-nostalgia, technostalgia, Yugo-nostalgia
Related terms: nostalgie de la boue, solastalgia, halcyon days, hark back, memory lane, reminiscence, anemoia