Sunday, 26 August 2012

Nostalgia : a wistful yearning for the past



Going to wrap my journeys up, all of them, in bus tickets printed in alphabets that I don't understand, in the taste of Spanish cakes and Korean spice, in the smell of otherness as I step off the plane, train and out of the van door, bouncing on a hotel bed and sleeping on a mountain floor, I'll put the thoughts of wandering in my dreamland, until I repack my bag and start moving, all over again.


nostalgia (n.)1770, "severe homesickness" (considered as a disease), Modern Latin (cf. Fr. nostalgie, 1802), coined 1668 by Johannes Hofer, as a rendering of Ger. heimweh, from Gk. algos "pain, grief, distress" (see -algia) + nostos "homecoming," from PIE *nes- "to return safely home" (cf. O.N. nest "food for a journey," Skt. nasate "approaches, joins," Ger. genesen "to recover," Goth. ganisan "to heal," O.E. genesen "to recover"). Transferred sense (the main modern one) of "wistful yearning for the past" first recorded 1920. 

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