homesick
/'houmsik/
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Adjective:
- Longing to return home: Feeling sad or unhappy because one is away from home and misses familiar people, places, or things.
Usage
- The adjective homesick describes a state of emotional distress caused by separation from one's home environment. It is typically used to describe a person's feelings.
- It is commonly used with the verb feel (e.g., feel homesick) or the verb be (e.g., be homesick).
- It can be used in both attributive position (before a noun) and predicative position (after a linking verb like 'be', 'feel', 'become').
Examples
- Adjective:
- She felt terribly homesick during her first week at university.
- The homesick soldier wrote letters to his family every day.
- Living abroad can be exciting, but it's easy to become homesick.
Advanced Usage
- "to be/get homesick for (something)": To miss a specific aspect of home.
- After months in the city, he was homesick for the quiet of the countryside.
- The feeling is often associated with nostalgia and can be triggered by familiar smells, foods, or songs.
Variants and Related Words
- Homesickness (noun): The state or feeling of being homesick.
- She suffered from acute homesickness when she moved overseas.
Synonyms
- Nostalgic: A feeling of pleasure and sadness mixed when thinking about happy memories from the past. (Note: 'Nostalgic' can be broader than 'homesick', as it is not exclusively tied to missing home.)
- Lonesome: Sad because one lacks friends or company. (This focuses more on missing people than a place.)
Antonyms
- Content: In a state of peaceful happiness or satisfaction.
- Settled: Comfortable and established in a new place.
Related Idioms and Phrases
- Home away from home: A place where one feels as comfortable as one does in one's own home. (This is the opposite feeling of being homesick.)
- The friendly hostel became a home away from home for the travelers.
Adjective
- longing to return home