What is "nostalgia"

nostalgia \nos*tal"gi*a\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ? a return home + ? pain.]

1. (Med.) Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.

2. A sentimental yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time; as, a nostalgia for the brotherhood of the Woodstock music festival; a nostalgia for the comradeship of one's college friends.

1770, "severe homesickness considered as a disease," Modern Latin, coined 1668 in a dissertation on the topic at the University of Basel by scholar Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) as a rendering of German heimweh (for which see home + woe). From Greek algos "pain, grief, distress" (see -algia) + nostos "homecoming," from PIE *nes- "to return safely home" (cognate with Old Norse nest "food for a journey," Sanskrit nasate "approaches, joins," German genesen "to recover," Gothic ganisan "to heal," Old English genesen "to recover"). French nostalgie is in French army medical manuals by 1754.\n

\nOriginally in reference to the Swiss and said to be peculiar to them and often fatal, whether by its own action or in combination with wounds or disease. By 1830s the word was used of any intense homesickness: that of sailors, convicts, African slaves. "The bagpipes produced the same effects sometimes in the Scotch regiments while serving abroad" [Penny Magazine," Nov. 14, 1840]. It is listed among the "endemic diseases" in the "Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine" [London, 1833, edited by three M.D.s], which defines it as "The concourse of depressing symptoms which sometimes arise in persons who are absent from their native country, when they are seized with a longing desire of returning to their home and friends and the scenes their youth ...." It was a military medical diagnosis principally, and was considered a serious medical problem by the North in the American Civil War:\n\nIn the first two years of the war, there were reported 2588 cases of nostalgia, and 13 deaths from this cause. These numbers scarcely express the real extent to which nostalgia influenced the sickness and mortality of the army. To the depressing influence of home-sickness must be attributed the fatal result in many cases which might otherwise have terminated favorably.

["Sanitary Memoirs of the War," U.S. Sanitary Commission, N.Y.: 1867]

n. 1 A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness. 2 A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.

n. longing for something past

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past

Nostalgia may refer to:

Nostalgia is the second studio album released by the American alternative rock music group July for Kings. It is their first independently released studio album.

The album was released on December 26, 2004, in physical form. It was released digitally on January 11, 2005. The album was produced by Joe Hedges and Eric Stewart.

Nostalgia is an album by Art Farmer and Benny Golson's New Jazztet featuring Curtis Fuller, recorded in New York in 1983 and originally released on the Japanese Baystate label in 1984.

Nostalgia is a solo album by Czech musician Ivan Kral, former member of Patti Smith Group. It was released in 1995 by BMG Ariola label and it was produced by Kral himself. It features guest appearances by Patti Smith and John Cale from the Velvet Underground.

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and (álgos), meaning "pain, ache", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.

Nostalgia can refer to a general interest in the past, its personalities, and events, especially the "good old days" from earlier in one's life.

The scientific literature on nostalgia usually refers to nostalgia regarding the personal life and has mainly studied the effects of nostalgia induced during the studies. Smell and touch are strong evokers of nostalgia due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdala, the emotional seat of the brain. These recollections of one's past are usually important events, people one cares about, and places where one has spent time. Music and weather can also be strong triggers of nostalgia. Nostalgic preferences, the belief that the past was better than is the present, has been linked to biases in memory.

(nostalgia) is a 38 minute 1971 film by artist Hollis Frampton (1936–1984). The film is composed of still black-and-white photographs taken by Frampton during his early artistic explorations which are slowly burned on the element of a hot plate, while the soundtrack offers personal comments on the content of the images, read by fellow artist Michael Snow. Each comment/story is heard in succession before the related photograph appears onscreen, thus causing the viewer to actively engage with the 'past' and 'present' moments as presented within the film.

The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington described it as an "avant-garde classic [with] considered eloquent and evocative explorations of memory and family".

In 2003, (nostalgia) was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is available on the DVD collection Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 (2008), as well as in a Hollis Frampton box set from The Criterion Collection " A Hollis Frampton Odyssey" (2012).

Nostalgia, originally released in Japan as , is a role-playing video game developed by Red Entertainment and Matrix Software for the Nintendo DS handheld system. Initially released in November 2008 for Japanese audiences by Tecmo, an English version of the game was officially announced for North America by Ignition Entertainment for an October 2009 release. The game's development was headed by producer Keisuke Kikuchi, with programming and three-dimensional graphics by Matrix Software, who had previously developed Square Enix's Nintendo DS versions of Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV.

Taking place in an alternate reality steampunk version of the 19th century, the game follows Eddie, a London boy and son of a great adventurer as he and his friends travel the world in an airship in search of his missing father. The game features turn-based combat and aerial battles between the player's customizable airship, the Maverick, and enemy airships. The player's party, consisting of Eddie, the street urchin Pad, a witch named Melody and the mysterious Fiona were shown in early trailers to be traveling to such places as New York City, Cairo, Tokyo, Northern Europe and South America.

Nostalgia is a novel by the Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu. The narrative consists of five distinct parts which assiduously link together to produce a narrative that is on the one hand disjointed and on the other produces, as a whole, a kind of hidden centre while negotiation the Romanian relationship to time and place, state and nationalism, communism and community, the rural and the capital with a neurotic, hallucinatory fervor that itself seems an exhalation of all of these anxieties.

First appearing in Romania under the name Visul ("The Dream") in 1989 with Cartea Româneasca Publishing House, having been mangled by censors, it appeared in its full form as Nostalgia in 1993 under Humanitas. It was thereafter translated into French, German, Hungarian, Spanish and other languages, and was nominated for literary prizes across Europe. In 2005, the novel was translated to English by Julian Semilian and published by New Directions. While sharply distinct from the realist narrative mode typifying North American literature, it was received with rave reviews by critics across the United States.

Nostalgia is the sixth studio album by Scottish singer-songwriter Annie Lennox, released on 23 October 2014 by Island Records. It is Lennox's first album in four years, and her third album of covers. The album consists of cover versions of compositions from the Great American Songbook; researched and learned by Lennox as she studied archival footage uploaded to YouTube.

Nostalgia debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 32,000 copies, earning Lennox her third US top ten solo album, as well as her first-ever number-one album on both Billboards Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts. It has sold 139,000 copies in the US as of April 2015. The album debuted at number nine on the UK Albums Chart, becoming Lennox's fifth UK top ten solo album. Nostalgia peaked inside the top ten in Austria, Canada, Italy and Switzerland. The album was nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 57th Grammy Awards.