Saudade is an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone. It derives from the Latin word for solitude. It is often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the object of longing ever again. It is a recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events, often elusive, that cause a sense of separation from the exciting, pleasant, or joyous sensations they once caused. Duarte Nunes Leão defines saudade as, "Memory of something with a desire for it."
Saudade (1899), by Almeida Júnior
Saudades de Nápoles (Missing Naples), 1895 by Bertha Worms.
Cape Verdean pop singer Cesária Évora had her biggest hit singing about saudade
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "sorrow" or "despair", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the early modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.
The archives director for The Saturday Evening Post said that the magazine has been regarded with "a mixture of nostalgia and affection". Shown: a Norman Rockwell cover from August 1924.
Tweed run, 2013
Rider in vintage clothing astride a vintage BSA motorcycle on High Street in Honiton, England in July 2023
A rural landscape in Vaud, Switzerland. The term "nostalgia" originally referred to the homesickness felt by Swiss mercenaries.