Meaning & use
nostalgia
Last updated
UK/nɒˈstældʒə/
US/nɑːˈstældʒə/
Meaning
noununcountable
A warm, slightly sad feeling of missing a happy time or place in the past.
Grammar: No plural and no article: she felt nostalgia for her childhood.
Patterns
- nostalgia for something
- nostalgia about something
Looking at old photos filled him with nostalgia.
There is a lot of nostalgia for the music of the 1980s.
She felt a pang of nostalgia as she walked past her old school.
Common combinations
- nostalgia for
- He felt nostalgia for the small town he grew up in.
- a wave of nostalgia
- A wave of nostalgia swept over her.
- sentimental nostalgia
- The film is full of sentimental nostalgia.
- tinged with nostalgia
- His memories were tinged with nostalgia.
- pure nostalgia
- The old cartoon is pure nostalgia for me.
Synonyms and how they differ
- wistfulness
- Focuses on a gentle sad longing, not specifically on the past.
- homesickness
- Specifically missing home, whereas nostalgia is longing for a time.
- reminiscence
- The act of recalling past events, not necessarily with longing.
Word family
- nostalgic adjective
- feeling or causing nostalgia
- nostalgically adverb
- in a nostalgic way
Commonly confused: nostalgia or memory?
nostalgia vs memory
A memory is a recalled event; nostalgia is the emotion of longing that may come with it.
Practice
Hearing the old song brought back a wave of ___ for her school days.
Choose one answer.
Nostalgia is a fond longing for the past. Novelty means newness, which is the opposite idea.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “nostalgia”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.
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