| 词汇 | nostalgia |
| 词源 | nostalgia. One source claims that philosopher Johannes Hofer coined nostalgia in 1668, but the Oxford English Dic- tionary only traces the word back to 1780. Nostalgia means a wistful desire to return to one’s home or homeland, to a former time or place in one’s life. It is made up of the Greek nostos, “a return home,” and algos, “pain.” In a New York Times (5/19/01) article Edward Rothstein writes that Hofer, a Swiss doctor, invented the word “to describe the lingering malady that afflicted Swiss soldiers away from home . . . Soldiers would be severely overcome with nostalgia when drinking and hearing Alpine folk melodies; the prescribed cures in- cluded leeches, opium and a return to the Alps. In 1733 the Russian Army apparently found an effective method for pre- venting the illness in the first place. Anyone who exhibited any symptoms would be buried alive.” Nostalgie de la boue (“mud nostalgia”) refers to nostalgia for degradation, the expression invented by 19th-century French dramatist Emile Augin in one of his plays. |
| 随便看 |
英语词源词典收录了13259条英语词源词条，基本涵盖了全部常用英语词汇的起源、历史，是研究英语词汇或通过词源学英语的必备工具。