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Origin and history of nostalgia

nostalgia(n.)

1726, "morbid longing to return to one's home or native country, severe homesickness considered as a disease," Modern Latin, coined 1688 in a dissertation on the topic at the University of Basel by scholar Johannes Hofer (1669-1752) as a rendering of German heimweh "homesickness" (for which see home + woe).

From Greek algos "pain, grief, distress" (see -algia) + nostos "homecoming," from neomai "to reach some place, escape, return, get home," according to Watkins 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. Originally 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.

[Dr. Scheuzer] had said that the air enclosed in the bodies of his countrymen, being in Æquilibrium with a rare and light air that surrounds them, was overloaded in lower countries with an air more dense and heavier, which compressing and obstructing the capillary vessels, makes the circulation slow and difficult, and occasions many sad symptoms. [Account of the publication of "Areographia Helvetiæ" in New Memoirs of Literature, London, March 1726]

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 of their youth ...."

It was a military medical diagnosis principally, and was considered a serious medical problem by the North in the American Civil War:

In 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]

Transferred sense (the main modern one) of "wistful yearning for the past" is recorded by 1920, perhaps from such use of nostalgie in French literature. The longing for a distant place also necessarily involved a separation in time.

also from 1726

Entries linking to nostalgia

home(n.)

Middle English hom, from Old English ham, home "dwelling place, house, abode, fixed residence; estate; village; region, country," from Proto-Germanic *haimaz "home," which is reconstructed to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *tkei- "to settle, dwell, be home."

Figuratively as the seat or location (of faith, love, etc.) from late Old English. As an adverb in Old English; as an adjective from 1550s. Early plural sometimes was hamen, homen.

Germanic cognates include Old Frisian hem "home, village," Old Norse heimr "residence; village; world," heima "home," Danish hjem, Middle Dutch heem, German Heim "home," Gothic haims "village." The old Germanic sense of "village" is preserved in English place names in -ham, German -heim, etc., and in hamlet.

'Home' in the full range and feeling of [Modern English] home is a conception that belongs distinctively to the word home and some of its Gmc. cognates and is not covered by any single word in most of the IE languages. [Buck]

At home "in one's house" is from Old English; by late 14c. as "in a congenial environment," hence "at one's ease" (1510s). The slang phrase make (oneself) at home "become comfortable in a place one does not live" dates from 1892.

Home guard "local volunteer defense force" is by 1836. To keep the home fires burning is a song title from 1914; home-fire as symbolic of family life is by 1892 (compare hearth).

Home movie "film of one's own domestic circle and activities" is from 1919. Home computer, in reference to one designed for recreational or educational use at home, is attested from 1967. To be nothing to write home about "unremarkable" is from 1907. In Middle English the long home was "the grave."

Home economics as a school course is attested by 1899; the phrase itself by 1879 as "household management," which is the simple sense of economy, the phrase is thus etymologically redundant.

Home as the goal in a sport or game is by 1778. Home base in baseball is attested by 1856; home plate by 1867. Home team in sports is by 1869; home field "grounds belonging to the local team" is by 1802 (the 1800 citation in OED 2nd ed. print is a date typo, as it refers to baseball in Spokane Falls). Home-field advantage is attested by 1914 in reference to U.S. football teams winning more often at home.

woe(n.)

mid-13c., a variant of wei (late 12c.) "misery, trouble, grief, wretchedness," from the interjection wei! "ah! oh! alas!", Old English wa!, Northumbrian wæ, representing a common exclamation of lament in many languages. Compare Latin væ, Greek oa, German weh, Lettish wai, Old Irish fe, Welsh gwae, Armenian vay. Old French ouai, Italian and Spanish guai are considered to be from Germanic.

It was used in denunciations (woe to the vanquished) and thus interjectionally. Also compare wellaway. By late 14c. as "a heavy calamity, an affliction." Related: Woes. Paired alliteratively in weal and woe "prosperity or adversity" from mid-13c.