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In German, the word Fernweh translates roughly as "farsickness." It denotes the desire to be somewhere other than where you are now. It was coined as an antonym to Heimweh, or "homesickness."

Does English have a good word to indicate the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else?

Rusty Tuba
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  • Related:http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/212474/is-there-a-word-to-describe-the-feeling-of-wanting-to-be-someone-else –  Dec 31 '14 at 15:06
  • @Josh61: not really about wanting a different life or forgetting about the past, as that question asks, but as in: here I am at my desk working (and I love my work), but right now I wish I were on the dock at Manhattan Beach. – Rusty Tuba Dec 31 '14 at 15:08
  • Two related concepts are cabin fever - when we're stuck indoors someplace for extended periods of time and just want to get out, and daydreaming, when we fantasize about being somewhere else. – Kristina Lopez Dec 31 '14 at 15:12
  • Isn't it Longing. – justjoined Dec 31 '14 at 15:13
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    There is the same question in german.stackexchange. They suggested "itchy feet" there. – ermanen Dec 31 '14 at 16:28
  • In my opinion, farsickness, as a neologism, is the best word. The problem might be that it is not common (yet). – ermanen Dec 31 '14 at 16:39
  • @ermanen How common does it have to be to become a word (neologisms are words by all definitions)? – Edwin Ashworth Dec 31 '14 at 17:10
  • @EdwinAshworth: I didn't say that it is not a word, in fact i said it is the "best word". So what is the question for? – ermanen Dec 31 '14 at 17:12
  • You said it is a word. I don't accept people saying '..... is a word' without support from say an accepted dictionary, evidence that it is part of the lexicon. The few examples I can find for 'farsickness' are transliterations. – Edwin Ashworth Dec 31 '14 at 23:10
  • @EdwinAshworth: Sorry, your question sounded like the opposite. "Farsickness" is a neologism and neologisms are words also. There are few sources that it is not mentioned as a transliteration but even it is the case, it is used as a word. Also, "fernweh" is a neologism too but gained usage in German. I think "farsickness" didn't gain enough usage so people might not think that it is a word. "What makes a word a word" was discussed in another question also, there was a comprehensive answer but I couldn't find. – ermanen Jan 02 '15 at 05:20
  • @ermanem At a railway theme park over 20 years ago, I partly informed, partly warned my little son about a locomotive just a few metres away: 'That's a steam locomotive'. It blew off water from its cylinders a second later. My son and I both jumped. Then he said, 'Very steam , that one.' He used 'steam' as an adjective (attributive nouns aren't intensifiable by very). I have witnesses. So do we say "What a delightful piece of mangling", or do we say " 'steam' has been an adjective since at least 1990"? I believe there has to be a level of usage higher than a few isolated cases. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 04 '15 at 11:34
  • @EdwinAshworth: That's something different. – ermanen Jan 05 '15 at 15:00
  • @ermanen Are you saying that it's acceptable to use any string one finds in print or on a notelet say as a word, but only in ways ... er ... you? ... find acceptable? If my son used 'steam' as an adjective, why is that less valid than someone using 'farsickness' as a noun? – Edwin Ashworth Jan 05 '15 at 22:18
  • @EdwinAshworth: tchrist gave a good answer in this question. I agree with him. – ermanen Jan 05 '15 at 22:23
  • @ermanen That's two of you at least, then. I think it's less autocratic-sounding to subscribe to Janus Bahs Jacquet's statement in that thread: 'Decades of academics studying these thugs in detail have been unable to come up with a definition of word they can agree on, so I think perhaps you're being a bit ambitious in thinking we can do so here.' – Edwin Ashworth Jan 05 '15 at 22:33

2 Answers2

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Depending on the context, wanderlust might work for you: "strong longing for or impulse toward wandering" (M-W), depending on how much you associate Fernweh with the act of travelling as opposed to the state of being away from home.

Ulrich Schwarz
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  • Funny that wanderlust is a German word also and loaned by English. We might loan "fernweh" also, who knows. Wikipedia says: "In modern German, the use of the word Wanderlust to mean "desire to travel" is less common, having been replaced by Fernweh (lit. "farsickness"), coined as an antonym to Heimweh ("homesickness")." – ermanen Dec 31 '14 at 16:33
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    @ermanen: FWIW, as a German phrase I'd put "Wanderlust" with "Weltschmerz" in that it's a semantically valid word, but I've never heard it actually used by native speakers. (I'm not a philosopher, though, so my sample might be skewed.) – Ulrich Schwarz Dec 31 '14 at 16:56
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Sometimes I use the phrase "a travel itch" when I stay home too long.

It might be described as

  • "the feeling someone gets when they've stayed home for too long, knowing there is a lot to do and see elsewhere.
Centaurus
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