Synonyms of wistful

wistful

adjective

as in nostalgic

showing or evoking a sad longing for an often idealized past

She felt wistful looking through her college yearbook, remembering old friends she had not seen in decades.

Related Words

• nostalgic
• dreamy
• sloppy
• moony
• misty-eyed
• sentimental
• wet
• moonstruck
• melodramatic
• sticky
• starry-eyed
• mawkish
• soapy
• maudlin
• schmaltzy
• cloying
• saccharine
• sudsy
• sappy
• drippy
• gooey
• sugary
• soppy
• mushy
• corny
• soap-operatic
• chocolate-box
• cutesy
• sugarcoated
• slushy
• lovey-dovey
• soupy
• spoony
• twee
• fruity
• novelettish

Dissimilar Words

• cynical
• hardheaded
• unsentimental
• hard-edged
• hard-boiled
• antisentimental

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of wistful

So when word dropped on September 1st that the nearly 200-year-old museum was closing at the end of the month, thousands of families began a wistful pilgrimage, to make one final visit. — Andrew Stelzer, NPR, 3 Oct. 2026

The resulting film is somehow weirder, wondrous, and more wistful than what even that logline suggests. — Zachary Lee, IndieWire, 16 Sep. 2026

The Giants coach sounded wistful when talking about Kaepernick and the lost chance to team up with the quarterback who had nearly denied him a Super Bowl ring. — Ian O'Connor, New York Times, 8 Sep. 2026

In late summer, Gap launched a new suite of perfumes modelled off the brand’s beloved fragrances of the nineteen-nineties—Grass, Heaven, Dream, and Om—in no small part to appeal to wistful elder millennials who miss spritzing themselves at the mall. — Rhoda Feng, New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2026

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