# Nostalgia for a place or time you've never been to



## ewie

Hello folks.  Does anyone happen to know if there's a term for a phenomenon (or maybe 'psychological condition') whereby a person feels nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in?

I can't think of anything to add, really, to this remarkably short question.


----------



## e2efour

Is it not called _false nostalgia_?


----------



## ewie

Okay, I've done a bit of looking on that there th'internet, and yes, some people do seem to use that term (which, for mysterious reasons, I don't remember coming across before) in the sense I want, which is _specifically_: nostalgia for a time or place you cannot possibly have lived in.  I'm not really interested in that kind of 'rose-tinted view of _one's own_ past'.


----------



## e2efour

I would say so. Does the following fall within your description?

"Nostalgia is looking back at actual past experiences and remembering them, usually fondly, sometimes desiring to go back and relive them. Sometimes this is valid escapism, other times it's just a consequence of the nostalgia effect. False nostalgia, on the other hand, is when the past I'd like to go back to never happened. It's fantasizing about the past."

http://everything2.com/title/False+nostalgia

PS Of course, nostalgia about a golden age is often false, although the person who claims to be nostalgic would prefer not to think so.


----------



## Loob

E2efour's explanation of "false nostalgia" seems to refer to something slightly different - a longing for a past that never existed. It seems to me that it's perfectly possible to feel 'real' nostalgia for a time you haven't lived through - not a mythical "Golden Age", but simply a century when you might have felt more 'at home'. 

If it's that feeling you're talking about, ewie, then I can't think of a better word than nostalgia, with no prefacing adjective. 
I'm not sure I'd use it of a place, as opposed to a time, though.


----------



## ewie

Loob said:


> If it's that feeling you're talking about, ewie, then I can't think of a better word than nostalgia, with no prefacing adjective.
> I'm not sure I'd use it of a place, as opposed to a time, though.


Yes, that's the jobbie, Mrs.  There's a _certain _dollop of golden-ageism in my little friend's nostalgia for other centuries, but, at the same time, he's enough of a realist to know that it wasn't all beer and roses in those days.  (His nostalgia is very much *time + place*, rather than just time)


----------



## owlman5

Hello, Ewie.   I don't have much to add other than I generally use "romantic" to modify imaginary views of the past: His romantic nostalgia for the eighteenth century is untroubled by any facts.  I can't really think of a good noun that means "romantic nostalgia".

After thinking about it a little more, I've decided that "nostalgia" doesn't really _need _an adjective like "romantic".  M-W supports this view: *2* *:* a wistful or excessively sentimental sometimes  abnormal yearning for return to or return of some real or romanticized  period or irrecoverable condition or setting in the past  <_nostalgia_ for his more impressionable youth>  <felt a sudden pang of _nostalgia_ for German music>

When I was a kid I shared with many boys a nostalgia for the age of dinosaurs.


----------



## Silver

Hello Mr Ewie, in my humble opinion, nostalgia means your thoughts revert to a specific period of time that made you feel good. 
But in accordance with what you said, it had never happened before, how can you get such feeling?

Please comment.


----------



## Loob

Silverobama said:


> Please comment.


That's exactly what we're discussing, Silver.


----------



## nzfauna

I think you'd have to explain it out.  I don't think there is a word for that feeling.
Nostalgia for a place I've never been.  A unexplained connection to a place I've never seen. etc.


Maybe there is a psychological condition of that nature??


----------



## Thomas Tompion

I'm wondering if myth might help us. The feelings described reminded me of the myth of Cythera, the island of Aphrodite. Baudelaire's famous, and, shocking poem (the Roy Campbell translation is the one I recommend, if you don't have French) gives an idea of the power of the idea exploited by Watteau's picture in the Louvre, which it is partly about, I suspect.

I'm not sure that _'going on a voyage to Cythera'_ is quite what I understand Ewie to be describing. The phrase evokes the idea of yearning for something unobtainable because in an imagined past, but it is also in most people's minds, I think, at least partly concerned with love, or with the finding of the ideal soul-mate.


----------



## e2efour

I agree that nostalgia does not necessarily have to refer to a time or place which is familiar to you or which you have actually experienced. However, true nostalgia and false nostalgia seem to me to be useful terms to distinguish between the two meanings.

Some people who claim to be nostalgic for a non-existent past clearly suffer from _false memory syndrome_. 

For example, those remarkable individuals who are regressed under hypnosis to a period long before their birth. They might well also have a feeling of nostalgia in their waking moments, if they remembered what happened during the hypnosis session.


----------



## ewie

Thanks for all the answers, folks  I'm still not sure what to call it ~ I don't care for _false nostalgia_ (it sounds ... well, _false_); _false memory syndrome_ is a bit more like it (but sounds false again, and a bit too clinical); I'm very reluctant to use plain _nostalgia_ because, for me, that specifically means 'longing for *one's own* past', which this _isn't._


----------



## Thomas Tompion

ewie said:


> Thanks for all the answers, folks I'm still not sure what to call it ~ I don't care for _false nostalgia_ (it sounds ... well, _false_); _false memory syndrome_ is a bit more like it (but sounds false again, and a bit too clinical); I'm very reluctant to use plain _nostalgia_ because, for me, that specifically means 'longing for *one's own* past', which this _isn't._


How erotic do you want it to be, Ewie?


----------



## ewie

Not erotic at all, thanks, Mr.T.  (I _am_ British, you know.)


----------



## Lamb67

Deja-vu,though it's originally French.


----------



## hyperslow

From epistemological point of view it is highly unlikely to think about an 'experience' that had never occured, existed.


----------



## Nunty

It seems to me I've read things like _She felt a strange nostalgia for a time long before her birth_. It's more of a _desire_ than nostalgia, isn't it?


----------



## Loob

You could always invent a word, ewie.


*Yester-yearning?*






_Golly that's brilliant, Looloo_


----------



## Montaigne

What about "illusion of false recognition"?


----------



## scorpiotide

Hi guys! I was thinking about this feeling today as well, stumbled upon this while searching for a good coin 

I don't think false nostalgia would do, since it's about something that _never happened/existed_. What we are talking about here is more about something that might pretty likely have happened, but long before someone's birth (from a few decades to a few centuries). Like "oh I wish I could live in the 80s in Manchester, so much amazing music being made."

I heard about a word called "_prestalgia_", which means feeling nostalgic about something that is happening or have not yet happened. It's not about our case, but would that sparks some inspiration?  like "postalgia?" 

I think people's fascination about retro/vintage things can be a part of this as well.


----------



## Michael Mackenzie

I apologize for intruding into your discussion of “nostalgiafor a place or time you've never been to,” and I realize that it is rather old,but just in case some of you are still interested, I recall reading the term “nostalgicillusion,” which sounds like a description of what you are discussing.


----------



## SwissPete

“nostalgicillusion” or “nostalgic illusion” ?


----------



## Michael Mackenzie

I don't know how the two words ended up as one. I ran theentire post through my spell checker. I posted "nostalgic illusion."


----------



## se16teddy

I'm an Ancient Greek in an Englishman's body. I'm channelling Cleopatra. The word "atavism" is sometimes used (correctly or not) to refer to a strong attachment to a byegone age: I found this in the BNC 
*FPR** 1378* Equally, however, the farmer is entitled to demand that the countryside be viewed neither as a more extensive version of an urban recreation ground, nor as an arcadian idyll set aside for the pursuit of an indulgent atavism


----------



## Linkway

Reading this old thread, I see that several contributors questioned whether one could have strong attachment to a time and place that have never experienced themselves.

One specific example is that of adult offspring of migrants especially where the offspring are not fully assimilated.  There is often a curiosity about, a yearning for, some idealized notion of the life they have not experienced themselves directly but have heard a lot about from older family members and others in similar circumstances. 

I don't know of a name for this phenomenon, but I wouldn't be surprised if anthropologists do.


----------



## Chasint

What about using the definition of the word nostalgia? 

*nostalgia* /nɒˈstældʒə 
-dʒɪə/n

a yearning for the return of past circumstances, events, etc
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/nostalgia

This definition says nothing about having experienced the past events - it's simply a yearning for them whether experienced or not.


----------



## sunny_88

I think I know what they want to say . I also have memories of places and things that .. well probably now .. not hapened to me . I don't remember them very well but I do know that I haven't seen those nowhere . Sometimes I'm just out with friends and I start to remember things but not fully . I know I haven't been there , but I've got that feeling that there was something important that happened  in thouse things and I have to remember them , but I can't . There are diferent cents, tastes , feelings or places that are provoking thouse memories . It's like they are are from some other life . ;[


----------



## Packard

There is a term in psychology called *Sehnsucht*.

That might apply.

I looked on line for a psychology definition but only found a bunch of new age mumbo jumbo.  Maybe one of our German speaking members can amplify.


----------



## london calling

se16teddy said:


> The word "atavism" is sometimes used (correctly or not) to refer to a strong attachment to a byegone age.


It does mean attachment to a byegone age (in a sociocultural context , not a genetic one), in the sense however that people actually revert to the 'old ways', i.e. they start behaving or thinking as their ancestors would have. I think that goes beyond the mere yearning for or curiosity about an earlier time that we are talking about here.

Michael Mackenzie mentions _nostalgic illusions_, which initially I thought might work, but then it occurred to me that the expression is somewhat derogatory: people with nostalgic illusions idealise the past, in my opinion, they yearn for something unreal: _illusion,_ after all, means delusion or misconception. I don't like _fake/false nostalgia_ for the same reason. 

PS. I think nostalgia has to be based on past experience so, again in my opinion, I do not belive we are talking about nostalgia in any form here: this is longing, yearning, but not nostalgia.


----------



## clynn393

The word you are looking for is "protonostalgia."


----------



## EStjarn

Thank you clynn393!

These definitions are from Urban Dictionary (submitted in 2007 and 2008):

*1. Protonostalgia*

A feeling one gets of being nostalgic for a period of time or place they had never been. Coined by Ryan Norths Dinosaur Comics.

*2. protonostalgia*

An emotion you feel when you are nostalgic for a time you were never alive in. It is a proper subclass of nostalgia.

*3. protonostalgia*

Longing for an inaccurate or naive image of an era you may or, far more commonly, may not have lived through.


----------



## Thomas Tompion

clynn393 said:


> The word you are looking for is "protonostalgia."


_Protonostalgia_ is not in the language of non-scientific educated people.

Whether it's in the language of anyone I can't say.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

I sense that you'll need to coin a new term for this ewie. Protonostaglia is crap.


----------



## JamesM

How about "alternalgia".   A pain for a life you never had.


----------



## zapateado

I think "wistful daydreaming" comes close to the sensation, though daydreaming does not have to involve a past, real or not, but can include fancying a non-existent past.  "Sehnsucht" in psychology seems to mean a longing for some event, circumstance, or achievement that would give meaning to one's life.


----------



## Copyright

Pedro y La Torre said:


> Protonostaglia is crap.


Yes, even worse than protonostalgia.


----------



## velisarius

Nostalgia for a past one has never lived in might be called "historical nostalgia" See Live Science, which discusses a character in a Woody Allen film who has a nostalgia for 1920's Paris. They distinguish between "personal nostalgia" and "historical nostalgia".


----------



## suzi br

clynn393 said:


> The word you are looking for is "protonostalgia."


Is it? 

I was wondering if "atavistic yearnings" might suit ewie's mate. Assuming they still are mates after all these years. 

Ref post number 27, that dictionary entry is rather light. In actual use the word nostalgia is always associated with a person's own experiences, however rose-tinted.


----------



## EStjarn

The prefix 'proto-' means (according to AHD):

1. First in time; earliest: _protolithic._
2. First formed; primitive; original: _protohuman.

_Those definitions may not be easily associated with the kind of nostalgia described in the OP.

But what about 'para-'? These are the first four definitions given by AHD:

1. Beside; near; alongside: _parathyroid._
2. Beyond: _paranormal._
3. Incorrect; abnormal: _paresthesia._
4. Similar to; resembling: _paratyphoid fever.

Paranostalgia._


----------



## ewie

My little friend and I (yes, we're still friends) thank you all for your continuing efforts, folks

We've put our heads together and ... well, ideally we're looking for a two-word term [adj + noun-which-is-probably-_nostalgia_] which is *self-explanatory* ~ and which doesn't make us sound _too_ delusional


----------



## EStjarn

ewie said:


> ...ideally we're looking for a two-word term [adj + noun-which-is-probably-_nostalgia_] which is *self-explanatory*...



I'm almost positive you know this:

The BYU Google Books interface allows searches for strings such as [adj + nostalgia] - the actual string being "[j*] nostalgia".

There are two corpuses, a British English and an American English. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the BrE interface to work properly for the above search string. The AmE interface returned 226 collocations. (One sets the maximum number of results by clicking "options" at the bottom left corner; the default is otherwise 100.)

Among the results, which included some of the suggestions given above, for example, _false nostalgia, romantic nostalgia_ and _historical nostalgia_, there was also _vicarious nostalgia_.

These are a couple of extracts from the Google Books results for the phrase:.
Likewise, Baker and Kennedy (1994) distinguish between 'real' nostalgia and 'simulated' nostalgia. The former is a nostalgia for some remembered past time, the one Davis (1979) identified originally; the latter is a form of vicarious nostalgia evoked from stories, images, and possessions (Belk, 1988; Baker & Kennedy, 1994; Stern, 1992).
--- _Brands in the Retrospective - A consumer motivation study_, Nora Henning.

The sixteenth-century world is, as the social historian Peter Laslett said in those great works that he did in the sixties, a particular structure of social life that one doesn't look back to with any nostalgia. We can't look back to it with nostalgia because we didn't experience it, but there is not even any vicarious nostalgia - we don't want to go back to it.
--- _A profile of Jonathan Miller_, Michael Romain.
.​


----------



## PaulQ

Just to prove ewie is not completely bats: the learned journal "Psychology Today" reports on "Nostalgia for a Time You Didn't Know" (but give no word for it...)

Carry on...


----------



## Miss Amazing

hiraeth  (n.): a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home  which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the  lost places of your past.


----------



## Copyright

Thank you. Do you have a source for that definition? 

From Wikipedia, I found this: Hiraeth /hɪəraɪ̯θ/ is a Welsh word that has no direct English translation. The University of Wales, Lampeter attempts to define it as homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.


----------



## Miss Amazing

I don't.  I guess it's just reworded.  Wiki cited has Lampeter  "attempting" to define it as this longing for a place that you can't return to.  Not necessarily because it doesn't exist anymore, but because it never actually did explicitly, implied, figuratively, or otherwise. Yes?


----------



## Copyright

I imagine from the attempted definition that some of what is missed was real and some romanticized, but it is a Welsh word, rather than a generally known English word, and it apparently describes this feeling not for a general place but specifically for "the Wales of the past."

I mention this only because those last two items seem to disqualify it as a general term for a "nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in."


----------



## london calling

I agree with you, Copyright. A) Only a Welsh speaker would understand it and b) it only refers to Wales.


----------



## JulianStuart

Phantom nostalgia (parallel meaning to phantom limb you feel it but it's not there)?


----------



## Packard

I cannot imagine the situation where this term would be required.

Why can't you just say, "I always wanted to go to Hawaii."?  For example.


----------



## Kirusha

Did Velisarius (post 38) nail it then? Is it "historical nostalgia"? Or do you find the phrase too academically sterile?

I suppose one could say something like: "He has bouts of historical nostalgia, fancying himself as a legionary".


----------



## ewie

_Phantom nostalgia_ is pretty good, JS


Packard said:


> Why can't you just say, "I always wanted to go to Hawaii."?  For example.


Because that comes nowhere near what I'm talking about, Mr P

I don't find _historical nostalgia_ as apposite as _phantom nostalgia_.  Wrapped up in my friend's 'feeling of nostalgia for a time/place I never lived in' is the additional 'knowledge that this feeling is unutterably futile', just like missing a limb that you'll never have again


----------



## Emmee

I stumbled upon this forum when it popped up in a Google search for a word describing a very similar feeling I have.  Mine is very difficult to explain to someone who has not had the same feeling.  The closest I can come is a line a read somewhere:" It is totally possible to be homesick for a place one has never been before."  I get an overwhelming emotion that brings tears to my eyes when I see certain places although I don't even know where they are.  The latest example was in the new Star Wars episode which ends on a very green jagged island.  When that scene came up, I gasped out loud and tears came to my eyes.  I had a very very deep feeling of longing.  It was almost a physical heart ache it was so strong.  When I came home, I had to find out where that island was.  It was Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry, Ireland.  I am adopted and don't know who my father was or what heritage I might be on his side.  But I have had similar feelings from photos in publications or that my friends have taken on trips to the British Isles.  

I found this quote on Wikipedia regarding the German word _Sensucht:
Sehnsucht took on a particular significance in the work of author C. S. Lewis. Lewis described Sehnsucht as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what." In the afterword to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress he provided examples of what sparked this desire in him particularly:

That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.[11]
_
I don't believe there is an English word that describes the essence of what the feeling means to me.


----------



## ewie

Welcome to this much-stumbled-upon forum, Emmee
Your thing is very very much like the thing I feel* ~ after all, a period in the past is just 'another place', really.  Mind you, I do generally _know_ about the place I feel that feeling for*.
I enjoyed your contribution, and hope you find your heritage some day

I mean 'that my friend feels' etc., obviously


----------



## You little ripper!

_Genetic/Ancestral nostalgia_ might work. Scientists have discovered that memories can actually be passed down through generations in our DNA. It could explain the feeling of nostalgia for something never personally experienced. It could also be the underlying cause of many irrational phobias.


_New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations._
The Mind Unleashed

_In addition to determining our physical characteristics, our vulnerabilities to certain diseases, and maybe even our personality, is it possible that the DNA helix holds some of the important memories of our ancestors?_
Can we remember our ancestors’ lives?


----------



## ewie

Devotees of this kind of thing might enjoy this brief, shallow article from BBC Radio 4's webpage*: Homesick for Christmas: the words you never knew you needed.  If we could blend together the words that German, Finnish and Welsh have ... we'd have something *close* to what I'm looking for

*Not sure if this page will be visible outside the UK.  If it isn't could someone let me know.


----------



## Thomas Tompion

ewie said:


> If it isn't could someone let me know.


If it isn't, they wouldn't know it wasn't, Mr E.


----------



## ewie

Well, Mr T, surely if they clicked on the link and got a page saying "This webpage isn't available in your country", they'd know ... ... ?


----------



## Thomas Tompion

ewie said:


> Well, Mr T, surely if they clicked on the link and got a page saying "This webpage isn't available in your country", they'd know ... ... ?


I was making a philosophical point, Mr E.  I wasn't altogether serious.


----------



## ewie

Ah right. 9 o'clock in the morning's a bit early for me to be recognizing philosophy


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

It works (in France at least).


----------



## Thomas Tompion

At the risk of being boringly philosophical again: nostalgia being by definition a sentimental longing for things one has known but which are gone, cannot be felt for things one has never experienced.


----------



## ewie

Pedro y La Torre said:


> It works (in France at least).


 (How long it will last I don't know: I've no idea how permanent BBC webpages are.)


Thomas Tompion said:


> At the risk of being boringly philosophical again: nostalgia being by definition a sentimental longing for things one has known but which are gone, cannot be felt for things one has never experienced.


Well, Mr T, at the risk of being mundane, that's the whole point of this thread: to find or come up with a term for this specific thing


----------



## You little ripper!

ewie said:


> Not sure if this page will be visible outside the UK. If it isn't could someone let me know.


It works here.


----------



## Packard

ewie said:


> Welcome to this much-stumbled-upon forum, Emmee
> Your thing is very very much like the thing I feel* ~ after all, a period in the past is just 'another place', really.  Mind you, I do generally _know_ about the place I feel that feeling for*.
> I enjoyed your contribution, and hope you find your heritage some day
> 
> I mean 'that my friend feels' etc., obviously


According to the notation I see at the bottom of your post it was posted on "January 25, 2016", so maybe there is also a longing for a time not yet arrived (ewietime).


----------



## ewie

Packard said:


> According to the notation I see at the bottom of your post it was posted on "January 25, 2016", so maybe there is also a longing for a time not yet arrived (ewietime).


I'm assuming this is more philosophy, Mr P, as I don't get it


----------



## PaulQ

Packard said:


> I cannot imagine the situation where this term would be required.


The mysterious word describes a past and/or place that the subject has idealised and deeply wishes that they were there instead of where they are now. Basically, it is a yearning for "the good old days [in some place]."  Whereas, in fact, those "good old days" were as beset with as many problems and stresses as today is - but the subject [in their delusion] does not realise/accept this.


----------



## Thomas Tompion

PaulQ said:


> The mysterious word describes a past and/or place that the subject has idealised and deeply wishes that they were there instead of where they are now. Basically, it is a yearning for "the good old days [in some place]."  Whereas, in fact, those "good old days" were as beset with as many problems and stresses as today is.


But this surely is nostalgia.  We've been told that we are looking for a word to describe a similar feeling for places and times we have never known, unless Ewie has been seriously deceived.


----------



## PaulQ

Yes, you're probably right in the way I have described it - nostalgia is the pleasnat feelings evoked by the memories, but my post was intended to show that the new word distinguishes a genuine nostalgia, e.g. for one's happy childhood, from the illusion/delusion of nostalgia for a childhood as a happy time, although it was not happy but the subject has now convinced themself that it was. More strongly, it could be a nostalgia for life in earlier times. There are characters around who think that the simple life of the 14th century peasant was more wholesome than that in present times and have a yearning to be back in those times - times (and places) that did not exist.

Ewie will not hesitate to tell me I am wrong but:

A: [Wistfully]: "Ah, back in Ancient Rome there was no A, B, or C and everyone could do E, F, and G. Those were the days... [drifts into reverie.]"
B: "I'm not sure that's right - you seem to be suffering from an attack of <insert word>: in Ancient Rome, A, B, or C were rife and only a few rich people could do E, F, and G."


----------



## Packard

ewie said:


> I'm assuming this is more philosophy, Mr P, as I don't get it


I misread the date on that post and thought it read January 25, 2017  my error.


----------



## velisarius

You're not the only one to be thrown by this philosophical discussion, Mr Packard. 

I thought at first that Pedro's post below had something to do with the famous French (Cartesian) logic, or even that it was something to do with the dreaded French "theory":



Pedro y La Torre said:


> It works (in France at least).



 It was a relief when I realised Pedro meant that the BBC link works in France. It works here too,


----------



## AutumnOwl

Is it anemoia? Anemoia: So clear and still you can see your own reflection.


----------



## Thomas Tompion

Packard said:


> I misread the date on that post and thought it read January 25, 2017  my error.


You ought to do this more often; it gives a lot of pleasure.

Had it not happened I wouldn't be able to look back on it nostalgically this time next year.


----------



## ewie

AutumnOwl said:


> Is it anemoia? Anemoia: So clear and still you can see your own reflection.


That would be pretty much perfectly _it_, AO ... if it weren't for the fact that the word appears to have been invented by [whoever invented it]: it's not in the full OED and all the citations on th'internet* lead back to the same source

*Well, all the ones I could be arsed to look at, i.e. the first half dozen.

EDIT: Oops, I was forgetting to do my duty by Mr Q [post #69].  Well, you're wrong _in my case_ at least, Mr Q.  I know that yes, there are plenty of people who have that 'false nostalgia' for past times that they imagine were idyllic etc. etc.  That's not what I have: I feel 'nostalgia' for past times (and unknown places) despite knowing that they were undoubtedly just as vile as the here and now.
... And in some cases. ... well, here's an illustration: I'm currently reading Mrs Gaskell's _Mary Barton_ (1848), in which she depicts the relentless, grinding poverty of urban Manchester with all its injustices etc., set against the background of that _annus horribilis_ to end all _annus horribilioides_.  And I actually feel a kind of weird 'nostalgia' for it


----------



## Aryaved

ewie said:


> Hello folks.  Does anyone happen to know if there's a term for a phenomenon (or maybe 'psychological condition') whereby a person feels nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in?
> 
> I can't think of anything to add, really, to this remarkably short question.



How about the term "Romantic Fascination"? Nostalgia, to me, almost always implies some sort of solemn bittersweetness for a time long past from your more youthful days, an era once experienced,  & etc. For something you CANNOT have possibly experienced but still feel some sort of connection to implies a phenomenon in which one feels fascinated by a bygone era, in my view, Romanticism and therefore Romantic would be apt from the term describing the artistic/literary movement which encompasses " emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature".


----------



## ewie

It's certainly a very nice bit of terminology, Aryaved


----------



## Aryaved

ewie said:


> It's certainly a very nice bit of terminology, Aryaved



You posited an interesting question on a topic I used to think much about. It's funny how people like music from the 50s/60s/70s/80s, but were born in the 90s (like me ). How people in this global/technological era long for a simplicity found only in a bygone era despite being born in this era who must experience it vicariously through their parents/grandparents or old books/movies! Certainly an interesting topic because it is an element of many political philosophies. Can't believe there isn't an actual, academic term for it


----------



## Kirusha

PaulQ said:


> A: [Wistfully]: "Ah, back in Ancient Rome there was no A, B, or C and everyone could do E, F, and G. Those were the days... [drifts into reverie.]"
> B: "I'm not sure that's right - you seem to be suffering from an attack of <insert word>: in Ancient Rome, A, B, or C were rife and only a few rich people could do E, F, and G."



Context is everything. Here one would obviously want to be slightly insulting:
"You seem to be suffering from an attack of golden ageism"
or
"You seem to be suffering from an attack of _Sehnsucht_" (which somehow didn't make it to the BBC's list of weird words)

I'm not sure about a more pleasant bitter-sweet feeling, though.
"I was reading about Ancient Rome and I felt a pang of longing".


----------



## Nemo9619

ewie said:


> Hello folks.  Does anyone happen to know if there's a term for a phenomenon (or maybe 'psychological condition') whereby a person feels nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in?
> 
> I can't think of anything to add, really, to this remarkably short question.


"Hierath"


----------



## srk

Nemo9619 said:


> "Hierath"


I find "hiraeth" online, but not "hierath."  It doesn't seem to me to be what ewie is after.

See posts #44 and #45.


----------



## ewie

srk said:


> I find "hiraeth" online, but not "hierath."  It doesn't seem to me to be what ewie is after.
> 
> See posts #44 and #45.


It also has the disadvantage of being Welsh, not English


----------



## Nancy4

Perhaps the word is "saudade"
_
The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. A. F. G. Bell In Portugal of 1912_

This word, as well as "hiraeth", have been popular on a missionary kid Facebook group that I am in.
But apart from the "in between-ness" that MK's and other Third Culture kids experience (and our complicated feelings of home and homesickness), I have the feeling that I think is similar to yours, ewie, when I start reading or watching _To Kill a Mockingbird.  _Years ago I even posted it as a status in Facebook, about whether one could feel homesick for a place (and time!) one has never been before.  To me, the elements of "wistfulness" and "longing" are important.
I think the films _Midnight in Paris _and _Somewhere in Time _are close to this feeling as well as the episode in the Twilight Zone television series titled "A Stop at Willoughby."
I've enjoyed reading this thread


----------



## ewie

Thanks for dropping by with your input, Nancy (I confess I'd never heard of _MK_ or _Third Culture_ before reading your post)


----------



## msladyrobin

ewie said:


> Hello folks.  Does anyone happen to know if there's a term for a phenomenon (or maybe 'psychological condition') whereby a person feels nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in?
> 
> I can't think of anything to add, really, to this remarkably short question.


----------



## msladyrobin

Try this one:
(I just joined, and it happens to be a favorite of mine)

Fernweh 
pr: fern-wuh  deriv. german 

"feeling homesick for a place you have never been to."

Hope that helps!


----------



## PaulQ

Well, it's not in the OED and, in Duden, it does not give the OP's meaning, as it implies great distance and lacks nostalgia. Also: Fernweh - Wiktionary


----------



## srk

My dictionaries translate it as "wanderlust" or "itchy feet," msladyrobin, and ewie is looking for an English expression.


msladyrobin said:


> pr: fern-wuh deriv. german


  more -vay than -wuh


----------



## msladyrobin

Hi srk.  Yes, I see that now.  I overlooked it until a nano-second after hitting 'Post Reply.'   I may need to hone my observationals for this site.


----------



## GreenWhiteBlue

Goiing back to Ewie's original post (which at this point is rather like going back to the second administration of Grover Cleveland), I immediately thought of Robinson's poem "Miniver Cheevy":
Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Using as models other words derived from names (such as chauvinism or mesmerism), how about "Miniver Cheevyism"?


----------



## velisarius

_The other March request was for “a word that means nostalgia for a time when I wasn’t alive.” This put more than a few readers in mind of the poem “Miniver Cheevy,” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. (Sample verse: “Miniver loved the days of old / When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; / The vision of a warrior bold / Would set him dancing.”) Thus were coined the likes of mischeevyousness (by Arthur Saltzman, of Joplin, Mo.) and cheevery, cheevish, and cheevement (all by Bruce L. Bush, of Highland Park, N.J.)._
Word Fugitives

_Ewie comes over all cheevish when he reads about the Industrial Revolution in the North of England._


----------



## ewie

I like it.
I've never heard of the poem, and, alas, will probably have forgotten all about it within 38 seconds of closing this thread again


----------



## suzi br

ewie said:


> I like it.
> I've never heard of the poem, and, alas, will probably have forgotten all about it within 38 seconds of closing this thread again



We won’t let you forget


----------



## sound shift

suzi br said:


> We won’t let you forget


I bet E. can't even remembering creating this thread: it was so long ago.


----------



## suzi br

sound shift said:


> I bet E. can't even remembering creating this thread: it was so long ago.





I get nostalgic for the days when I used to remember things.


----------



## PaulQ

I think we need a new word for "nostalgia for things you can't remember."


----------



## ewie

PaulQ said:


> I think we need a new word for "nostalgia for things you can't remember."


----------



## heypresto

I used to know that word, but . . .


----------



## sound shift

And I've forgotten how to use emoticons ...


----------



## Thomas Tompion

The advantage of 'wistfulness' is that it can be felt for something which never existed.  It means longing, usually for something unspecified in the mind of the person longing.

I don't know why this scratching around for unfamiliar words in German, Greek, and Urdu, etc. continues.

Sorry to be serious.


----------



## sound shift

Thomas Tompion said:


> I don't know why this scratching around for unfamiliar words in German, Greek, and Urdu, etc. continues.


It's because we're not ... all right, I'm not ... as sharp as you, TT.


----------



## suzi br

It’s because we’re enjoying ourselves.


----------



## Kurokubu

Alright, so, it's been 9 years and your curiosity and burning desire to learn the term has probably gotten so great that it's likely exceeded your brain's capacity to even remember that it was even a thing (or you already learned it), but, the term is Anemoia.


----------



## JulianStuart

Apparently a made-up word, according to this, but it sounds suitably obscure and believable

These Words Are Completely Made Up, But What They Describe Is Painfully Real


----------



## Packard

JulianStuart said:


> Apparently a made-up word, according to this, but it sounds suitably obscure and believable
> 
> These Words Are Completely Made Up, But What They Describe Is Painfully Real


I Googled the word and found a site that promised a definition, but Symantec reported "Symantec has blocked ...security event..." So I never did see the definition.  A dangerous word, no doubt.


----------



## se16teddy

If you like anemoia, you will enjoy the Meaning of Liff. The authors of this book invented meanings for lots of (often odd-sounding) British place-names. The Meaning of Liff - Wikipedia


----------



## london calling

Kurokubu said:


> Alright, so, it's been 9 years and your curiosity and burning desire to learn the term has probably gotten so great that it's likely exceeded your brain's capacity to even remember that it was even a thing (or you already learned it), but, the term is Anemoia.


A made-up word which is not in any dictionary if not the Urban Dictionary (which is is a dictionary of slang).


----------



## Smoll_Mouse

ewie said:


> Hello folks.  Does anyone happen to know if there's a term for a phenomenon (or maybe 'psychological condition') whereby a person feels nostalgia for a place he's never been to or a time he's never lived in?
> 
> I can't think of anything to add, really, to this remarkably short question.


*Kaukokaipuu: *People of, say, Irish descent who have never actually _been _to the country of their ancestry may still experience an unexpected ache for it, as if they miss it — a strange, contradictory sort of feeling, as you can’t really miss someplace you’ve never been. But the Finnish recognize that the emotion exists, and they gave it a name: _kaukokaipuu_, a feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never visited. It can also mean a kind of highly specified version of wanderlust, a “craving for a distant land” — dreaming from your desk about some far-off place like New Zealand, or the Hawaiian Islands, or Machu Picchu, with an intensity that feels almost like homesickness. 



I stumbled across this whilst researching another phenomena. A few years ago I was quite stuck on this myself, so I had to sign up just to save you some agony. So from one Brit to another, rest easy my friend.


----------



## ewie

Thanks Smoll_Mouse ~ I'll add it to the list of terms that I'll never be able to remember


----------



## heypresto

Is there a term for 'nostalgia for the time when one could remember things'?


----------



## ewie

Ooh don't ask _me_, HP.


----------



## JulianStuart

heypresto said:


> Is there a term for 'nostalgia for the time when one could remember things'?


I used to know that one


----------



## AaronLemon

I believe the word you’ve all been looking for is anemoia. It’s a fairly new term but It means:

a nostalgic sense of longing for a past you yourself have never lived. It is nostalgia for the “good ol' days”

Hope this is good!


----------



## forgoodorill

Yes, that's the word! Thanks for your reply, AaronLemon!


----------



## Packard

AaronLemon said:


> I believe the word you’ve all been looking for is anemoia. It’s a fairly new term but It means:
> 
> a nostalgic sense of longing for a past you yourself have never lived. It is nostalgia for the “good ol' days”
> 
> Hope this is good!


I would note that it is a word invented by a rock musician, apparently for lyrics.  It does not seem to be universally accepted.
https://www.google.com/search?q=anemoia&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1-m


----------



## suzi br

But we know there is a gap in the market. so maybe this will fill the bill?


----------



## Packard

suzi br said:


> But we know there is a gap in the market. so maybe this will fill the bill?


I was not condemning the word. I was trying to put it in perspective.


----------



## velisarius

It was suggested back in post #72 of this thread. What's the name for a thread that goes round in circles?


----------



## Roxxxannne

velisarius said:


> It was suggested back in post #72 of this thread. What's the name for a thread that goes round in circles?


It's called yarn, either as in yarn knitted in the round or as in a sailor's story.

The Past is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal is very interesting book about how we view the past.  He uses simply 'nostalgia' for how we think of places and times we've never experienced (for instance '60s-themed parties held by people not yet born then).


----------



## suzi br

velisarius said:


> It was suggested back in post #72 of this thread. What's the name for a thread that goes round in circles?



What's it called when you CAN remember things?


----------



## Roxxxannne

suzi br said:


> What's it called when you CAN remember things?


I knew it a second ago, but I forget now. My memory's not what it used to be.


----------



## RasTah

Oh my God I went searching for a word to describe a Nostalgia of place or time I never been, got led to original post im truly enjoying this guys.


----------



## nightowl666

Could it be ‘fantasy"? Or "nostalgic fantasy?


----------



## london calling

nightowl666 said:


> Could it be ‘fantasy"? Or "nostalgic fantasy?


No, the question was answered in post 72.


----------



## velisarius

Does  a made-up word of obscure etymology count though? An online search tells me that _anemoia_ is the invention of writer John Koenig. I don't think it's caught on.



> John Koenig is the founder and author of an online dictionary of made-up words called _The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows_, which is also a YouTube series. His dictionary aims to fill the gaps in the English language with terms to describe new emotions.


----------



## velisarius

How about _pseudo-nostalgia_? It does have a few hits in a Google search.

_Retro-marketing attempts to induce feelings of pseudo-nostalgia..._

Post #2 suggested false nostalgia, so I guess  that takes us back to where we started.


----------



## notsu

In my native Estonian, I would use _passeism_; it seems to be used in English too, to a certain extent. Although it has only temporal, not spatial meaning.


----------



## lentulax

'Nostalgia may be characterized in four words—sadness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and weakness. The nostalgic loses his gayety, his energy, and seeks isolation'  (1874 quotation from Merriam-Webster) - I hope, ewie, that in the decade  since the thread started, your friend has found a way to cope and is feeling better.


----------



## ewie

lentulax said:


> I hope, ewie, that in the decade  since the thread started, your friend has found a way to cope and is feeling better.


Thanks, Lentulax ~ I'd say he's coping fairly nicely ... well, coping nicely with the nostalgia thing, anyway


----------

