homesickness

Missing your place

Homesickness is the distress of being away from home—a longing for familiar surroundings, people, and routines.

It affects children at summer camp, students studying abroad, and adults relocated for work.

The feeling can range from mild wistfulness to acute misery: She was so homesick she could barely eat.

Unlike nostalgia, which yearns for a time, homesickness yearns for a place.

longing

ache

Persistent dull discomfort

piningAching with prolonged desire
yearningIntense prolonged craving
craveIntensely desire something

miss · heartache · wistful · forlorn · melancholy · separation · distance · isolation · lonely · solitude

nostalgia

memories

Stored past experiences

childhoodLife's earliest phase
familiarityKnowledge through experience
reminisceRecall past experiences fondly

roots · heritage · tradition · comfort · recollection · flashback · bygone · yesteryear · family · motherland

displacement

expatriate

One living abroad permanently

emigrantPerson resettling in another nation
abroadIn foreign territory
foreignFrom another nation

relocation · uprooted · stranded · alienation · disoriented · unsettled · stranger · faraway · immigrant · diaspora

remedy

reunion

Gathering after separation

returnGo back again
connectionA joining or relation
photosRecorded light images

letters · community · belonging · adjustment · coping · support · routine · friendship · cooking · traditions

Categories

homesicknesslonging, yearning, pining, hiraeth, return
girls' boarding schoolsdormitories, dorms, uniforms, headmistress, house system
travel ailmentsjet lag, airsickness, seasickness, carsickness, traveler's diarrhea
life adjustmentsempty nest syndrome, separation anxiety, bereavement, midlife crisis, identity crisis
Filipino diasporaFilipino Americans, brain drain, chain migration, dual citizenship, recruitment agencies
emotionsjoy, anger, fear, sadness, love

Opposites

desire for home vs. desire for elsewhere

homesicknesswanderlust

Craving for distant places

itchy feet · travel bug · restlessness · adventurousness · escapism

emotional attachment to place

homesicknessat-homeness

Comfort in a place

rootlessness · belonging · contentment · settledness · rootedness

attachment to home

homesicknessclaustrophobia

Dread of enclosed areas

cabin fever · escapism · suffocation · restlessness

Family

homesick, home, sick, sickness, homeless, homely, sickening, homeland, sicken

Familiarity: Top 50,000
Profile: Known to kids · Used worldwide · Timeless · Abstract · Negative · Everyday, not technical · Rated G