homesick
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of homesick
Explanation
When you're away from home and you miss it terribly, you're homesick. Most kids get homesick when they first go to summer camp. Everyone feels homesick sometimes, but it's probably most common for kids to get homesick when they're on their first sleepover or visiting their grandparents, or even when they leave for college as freshmen. There is a wistful yearning included in the idea of being homesick — a longing to be back where you started. Homesickness came first, from the German heimweh, "home woe" or "home pain."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Lagarde was still reeling from the recent death of her father when she arrived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and was for months homesick for France.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2026
But in the end she wasn't as homesick as she'd anticipated.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
"I wanted a break," he remembers, partly because he was "homesick" for the city.
From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026
He’s now sent hundreds of homesick New Englanders classic dishes, like pork fried rice and boneless ribs from area favorites like Golden Temple in Brookline and Fantasy Island in Salem.
From Salon ● May 3, 2026
They made him feel wistful and homesick for his cave and his friends.
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
