Nostalgic Meaning
/nɔˈstældʒɪk/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjOf, having, or relating to nostalgia.
nounA person who displays nostalgia for something.
Sentence Examples
The orchestra struck up nostalgic music.
She indulged herself in nostalgic memories.
He was nostalgic about the greenness of his homeland.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The old song made her feel ____ about her high school days.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The old house felt very ____, reminding her of the summers she spent there as a child.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree English nostalgia Proto-Indo-European *-ikos Proto-Italic *-ikos Latin -icuslbor. Old French -iquebor. Middle English -ik English -ic English nostalgic From nostalgia + -ic.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"And here, as I write, the faint, scarcely perceptible, ghost-like suspicion of a scent—a mere nostalgic fancy, compound, generic, synthetic and all-embracing—an abstract olfactory symbol of the "Tout Paris" of fifty years ago, comes back to me out of the past; and fain would I inhale it in all its pristine fulness and vigour."
— 1891, George Du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson:
"And it was their voices which affected Gudrun almost to swooning. They aroused a strange, nostalgic ache of desire, something almost demoniacal, never to be fulfilled."
— 1920 November 9, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Women in Love, New York, N.Y.: Privately printed [by Thomas Seltzer] for subscribers only, →OCLC:
"Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He was twenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly conscious of the fact."
— 1921, Aldous Huxley, chapter 1, in Crome Yellow, London: Chatto & Windus:
"An opening sequence, featuring a de-aged Ford playing a younger Indy, is a bold and nostalgic gambit, offering a glimpse of what you've missed."
— 2023 June 29, City AM, London, page 18, column 2:
"But of course every well-brought-up person to-day knows that the Victorians were sentimentalists, nostalgics, escapists, self-deceivers."
— 1933 January, Gilbert Armitage, “Were these Victorians?”, in The Bookman, volume LXXXIII, number 496:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The old song made her feel ____ about her high school days.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The old house felt very ____, reminding her of the summers she spent there as a child.