Meanings
- uncountableA form of homesickness experienced when one has not moved, but one's environment has changed.
Part of what I feel in this city is solastalgia, not so much for buildings as for the routines I established around those buildings: the walk to visit friends in the CBD, the stroll to the cinema.
2015, Fiona Farrell, The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, →ISBN, page 3421 more example
There are many people writing and talking about extinction now, and about solastalgia, the psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change. Artists, musicians, dancers, and screenwriters are wringing profound solastalgia from the recesses of our collective subconscious and spinning its trajectory out into the light where we can get a better sense of it.
2010, Albert Bates, The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change, New Society Publishers, →ISBN
Origin
Coined by Australian philosopher and researcher Glenn Albrecht in 2005 from Latin sōlācium (“solace, comfort”) + -algia (“pain”).
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Catalan solastàlgia
- solastàlgiaform of homesickness
Finnish solastalgia
- solastalgiaform of homesickness
French solastalgie
- solastalgieform of homesickness
Polish solastalgia
- solastalgiaform of homesickness
Portuguese solastalgia
- solastalgiaform of homesickness
Spanish solastalgia
- solastalgiaform of homesickness
Cite this entry
solastalgia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/solastalgia
“solastalgia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/solastalgia. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “solastalgia,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/solastalgia.
Source: solastalgia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.