Sentimental vs. Nostalgia — What's the Difference?

Having, showing, or caused by emotion, especially tender or affectionate feeling

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.

Having, showing, or caused by strong or extravagant tenderness or sadness, often in an idealized way

A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

Characterized by sentiment, sentimentality or excess emotion.

The condition of being homesick; homesickness.

Derived from emotion rather than reason; of or caused by sentiment.

A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness.

Romantic.

(transferred sense) A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.

Having, expressing, or containing a sentiment or sentiments; abounding with moral reflections; containing a moral reflection; didactic.

Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.

Inclined to sentiment; having an excess of sentiment or sensibility; indulging the sensibilities for their own sake; artificially or affectedly tender; - often in a reproachful sense.

A sentimental yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time; as, a nostalgia for the brotherhood of the Woodstock music festival; a nostalgia for the comradeship of one's college friends.

Addressed or pleasing to the emotions only, usually to the weaker and the unregulated emotions.

Longing for something past

Given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality

Effusively or insincerely emotional;