1. A longing to return home or to one's native land; severe homesickness: When looking through the photo album, Sylvia sometimes had a feeling of nostalgia for California where she grew up as a kid.
2. A mixed feeling of happiness, sadness, and longing when recalling a person, place, or event something from the past: Jake was filled with nostalgia for his college days.
3. The pain of yearning for a former time in one’s life or for familiar people and surroundings: Smelling the bread baking in the oven gave Rebecca a feeling of nostalgia of how it used to be in the kitchen when she was a child.
4. Etymology: from 1770, "severe homesickness" (considered as a disease), Modern Latin, coined in 1668 by Johannes Hofer as a rendering of German heimweh, from Greek nostos, "homecoming" + algos, "pain, grief, distress".

The transferred sense of "wistful yearning for a past or earlier time", was first recorded in D.H. Lawrence's The Lost Girl in 1920.

Homesickness or a strong desire to return to one's home

The pain of longing to return home, to a former time in one’s life, or to familiar people and surroundings; severe home sickness. The illustration above suggests that at least one of the Panda bears wants to return to China, its native land.

A nostalgic feeling is considered to be a mixed feeling of happiness, sadness, and longing when recalling a person, place, or event something from his or her past.

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Longing for one's home or homeland is explained at nostalgia.