Nostalgia vs. Wistful — What's the Difference?

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 νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.

Full of melancholy longing or wishful yearning

A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

Expressing sadness or yearning

The condition of being homesick; homesickness.

Full of longing or yearning.

A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness.

Sad and thoughtful.

(transferred sense) A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.

Longing; wishful; desirous.

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

Full of thought; eagerly attentive; meditative; musing; pensive; contemplative.

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.

Full of longing or unfulfilled desire;

Longing for something past

Showing pensive sadness;