nostalgia
/nɒˈstældʒə/noun
Bittersweet longing for the past or home
From Greek nostos (homecoming or return) + Greek algos (pain).
Lineage
nostos
algos
The story
In 1688, Johannes Hofer, a scholar at the University of Basel, gave a name to an ailment doctors believed could kill Swiss soldiers far from home: nostalgia, literally a painful homecoming. The recipe was Greek—nostos, “return home,” plus algos, “pain”—so the word pictured homesickness not as a tender sigh but as an injury. For centuries it belonged mainly to military medicine; during the first two years of the American Civil War, the Northern army reported 2,588 cases and 13 deaths attributed to it. By the 1920s, the pain had shifted from geography to time: people could feel nostalgia for vanished childhoods, old fashions, or places that no longer existed. Remember the core image: nostalgia is not simply remembering home—it is an old Greek homecoming that hurts because the door is locked.
Modern usage
A happy or bittersweet remembrance of an earlier time, event, or cultural experience
- Heard in
- gaming · popular culture · social media
- See
- Atari memories; Halo 3
Words from the same roots
nostos · Ancient Greek, ‘homecoming or return’
Derivednostos, nostalgic, homecoming, return
algos · Ancient Greek, ‘pain, grief, or distress’
Derived-algia, neuralgia, myalgia, analgesic, odynophagia