nostalgicadj.n.

1782 T. Arnold Observ. Nature Insanity I. 266 A variety of, pathetic insanity, to which, from nostalgia its most usual appellation, I have given the epithet nostalgic.

1838 R. M. Bird Peter Pilgrim II. 126 A nostalgic longing for the bright and beautiful world we have left behind us.

1894 G. Du Maurier Trilby (1895) 331 The desire to hear it once more became nostalgic—almost an ache!

1938 Amer. Home Oct. 66/2 We could do something to help her recover from some of her disillusionment, nostalgic yearnings for gold wallpaper, crocheted tidies and feather beds.

1983 W. Byron tr. A. Le Vot F. Scott Fitzgerald vii. xxi. 343 Only his affectionate, nostalgic letters..preserved feelings that the divergences in their lives threatened to stifle.

1997 J. Seabrook Deeper iii. 87 People whom we used to think of as computer nerds would have the same hipness that in nostalgic retrospect we now assign to beatniks.

1869 O. W. Holmes Cinders from Ashes in Atlantic Monthly Jan. 117/2 We jogged soberly along—kind parents and slightly nostalgic boys—towards the seat of learning.

1877 W. Black Green Pastures xl We dragged these nostalgic persons out on to the pleasant little iron balcony.

1939 M. McLuhan Let. 1 Feb. (1987) 106 I go to all the trouble of discovering a brand new vocable, a nice cosy ice-melting sound, and then you become nostalgic for ‘adolescent adulation’.

1967 R. Narayan Sweet-Vendor xiii. 184 He felt nostalgic for his brother's gruff voice.

1995 Denver Post 28 May e10/2 Barricade is betting it can build an audience among nostalgic older men who grew up on pulps.

1937 D. M. Jones In Parenthesis iii. 50 He heard..the nostalgic puffing of a locomotive, far off, across forbidden fields.

1950 A. L. Rowse Eng. of Elizabeth v. 184 That nostalgic figure, the Town Crier, was becoming familiar.

1995 BBC Good Food Aug. 70/3 Just sit back, relax and inhale that nostalgic vanilla fragrance as you enjoy your sun-downer.

1938 N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 4 Dec. 41 (advt.) Writers are forever going back where they came from to distil The True Essence of the American scene. New York, not generally admitted to the Union, seldom figures in these nostalgics.

1950 H. S. Schultz Nationalism & Sectionalism in S. Carolina vii. 148 Nostalgics said that his election was a return to the good old days when the office sought the man.

1961 Spectator 13 Jan. 45/1 Nineteen hundred and sixty, whatever the carpers and the cynics and the Francophiles and the Brechtians and the nostalgics may say, was a year in which it was a pleasure to stay awake in the theatre.

1992 Hist. Today (Nexis) Dec. 58 I don't know whether my own notion that even the films and the music aren't so good now, fifty years on, types me as a silly old nostalgic.

2001 Evening Post (Bristol) (Electronic ed.) 29 June Fetes are a wonderful reminder of the way it used to be. So for all nostalgics they're a must.