anemoia
Nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known.
uncommon, uncountable
Yet, from reboots to genre revivals, nostalgia remains a powerful force in pop culture. So does an associated phenomenon, called anemoia, which is essentially nostalgia for a past you’ve never experienced. Nostalgia and anemoia have been Broadway’s bread and butter for decades.
Where it comes from
Coined by American author and neologist John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words. From Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos, “wind”) + -oia, extracted from loanwords like paranoia where -νοια (-noia) refers to a certain state of mind.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry anemoia (CC BY-SA 4.0).