"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 14/11/17 (nasty, nest, nostalgia)

I'm going to look at three words which on the face of it have absolutely nothing in common, but there is a link, sometimes a tiny, tiny link, between them. And I'm going to start off with nasty and nest. Because in the language trade they might be possibly, we think, be doublets. In other words, they share a common route. So the came into English via a different language, which happens all the time. But they may come from the ancient, ancient language that I often mention, of Indo-European, which was the mother of so many languages, and a root meaning nest. It seems a bit of leap of imagination to link the two, but it seems that the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons may have noticed that the place where birds sit, as Chris Packham will tell you, can get extremely foul.  And it may be that thanks to this observation, nasty rather than nesty, came into English to refer to something as disgusting and filthy, as a birds' nest. For that was the original meaning, something really repellent. But as for nests, I saw the word nestalgia recently, which is a jokey blend or portmanreau, meaning a longing for bed. When we think of nostalgia, which has a curious history itself, it was coined in 1668, and if was part of dissertation by a Swiss scholar who wanted to translate the native German, Heimweh, which translates as home-woe, longing for home. Fernweh is the longing for faraway places. But he took it from the Greek, the scholar, from the Greek, algos, meaning pain or grief, and nostos, meaning homecoming. So quite a beautiful word. But not beatiful in its consequences, because for a long time it was listed as an endemic disease in many medical manuals, because it was thought that when all these depressing symptoms came together, they actually could be fatal in the wrong person. And in the American Civil War it was cited as a serious medical problem. It was said that some 2 588 cases of nostalgia were reported, and 13 deaths. The idea, I guess, is that if your morale is low, then so is youe immunity. Today, nostalgia thankfuly  has a far more wistful sense, it's a longing for something lost, usually something evanescent. And it's deffinitely a long way from nasty. But those three words have a curious link.