Home › Glossary › Letter N

Nostalgia

Psychology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A bittersweet emotional state in poetry characterized by idealized longing for the past, often evoking loss, memory, and temporal distance.

Detailed Definition
Nostalgia blends warmth and melancholy. Poets use it to explore memory’s distortions, employing sensory detail and temporal shifts to evoke lost innocence, places, or relationships as emotional anchors.
Example
Example in poetry:
In W.B. Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” nostalgia idealizes rural solitude; In Sylvia Plath’s “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” nostalgia contrasts with emerging power; In Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” nostalgia connects ancestral memory; In Emily Dickinson’s “I never saw a Moor,” nostalgia trusts unseen truths; In Ocean Vuong’s “Telemachus,” nostalgia blends with filial love and loss; In Li-Young Lee’s “From Blossoms,” nostalgia celebrates shared joy over peaches.
Additional Notes
Nostalgia—a sentimental longing for the past—is often complicated in poetry (not just sweet); Hughes links it to ancestral memory; Vuong to war and loss; poetic techniques include sensory detail, past tense, or fragmented memory; students should analyze whose past is nostalgic—and whose isn’t; note its political use: nostalgia can erase or reclaim history.
Also Known As
Sentimentality Longing Reminiscence Yearning Homesickness Añoranza wistlessness
Skip to main content