对故土与逝去之物的深切眷念——想念一个也许回不去、也许从未如记忆中那般存在过的家。 A deep longing for a home you cannot return to — one that perhaps never quite was.
A deep longing for a home you cannot return to — one that perhaps never quite was. 对故土与逝去之物的深切眷念——想念一个也许回不去、也许从未如记忆中那般存在过的家。
词源etymology
威尔士语 hir（长）＋ 抽象名词后缀 -aeth——字面接近「长久之感」：一种拉得很长的惦念。 与康沃尔语 hireth、布列塔尼语 hiraezh 同源，是凯尔特语族共有的一个词根。
Welsh hir (“long”) + the abstract suffix -aeth — roughly “long-ness of feeling”: a longing stretched thin across time. Cognate with Cornish hireth and Breton hiraezh, one root shared across the Celtic family.
背景the story
在威尔士，这个词是身份的一部分：威尔士语大词典（Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru）给它的义项 是一串——对逝者的哀思、渴望、怀旧、乡愁。18、19 世纪的浪漫主义与民族书写， 把它和威尔士的文化失所绑在了一起：想念的不只是家，还有一个「若未被同化，本可以成为的威尔士」。
2020 年，OED 把它作为威尔士语借词正式收入英语——一个词在邻居的词典里安了家， 而它在自己语言里的日常用法，反而比英语世界传说的要朴素得多。
In Wales the word is part of the furniture of identity: the University of Wales dictionary (Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru) glosses it with a whole string — grief for the departed, longing, nostalgia, homesickness. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romantic and nationalist writing bound it to cultural displacement: a longing not just for home, but for the Wales that might have been.
In 2020 the OED admitted it into English as a Welsh borrowing — a word settling into the neighbour’s dictionary, while its everyday use at home stays plainer than the legend.
中文里的邻居neighbors in chinese
「乡愁」几乎就是它——余光中那一代人写的乡愁，连「回不去」的成分都对得上。 差别有二：乡愁的对象是真实存在过的故乡，而 hiraeth 在英语世界的用法里， 连从未存在过的家也可以想念；另外，乡愁在汉语里是文人词，hiraeth 在威尔士是口语， 孩子想家也用它。
乡愁 is very nearly it — the 乡愁 of Yu Kwang-chung’s generation even shares the “no way back.” Two differences: 乡愁 points at a home that really existed, while English-world hiraeth extends to homes that never did; and 乡愁 is a literary word in Chinese, while hiraeth is spoken Welsh — a child missing home uses it too.
Dwedwch, fawrion o wybodaeth, / O ba beth y gwnaethpwyd hiraeth; / A pha ddefnydd a roed ynddo / Na ddarfyddo wrth ei wisgo.请博学的先生们说说：hiraeth 是用什么造的？里面放了什么材料，竟至于越穿越用、也不见磨损？ Tell me, men of great learning, what is hiraeth made of; and what stuff was put in it, that it never wears out with the wearing. 佚名 anonymous · 威尔士传统民谣（hen benillion） traditional Welsh verse (hen benillion)
She had never lived in Wales — her grandmother had — yet standing on that wet hillside she felt something she could only call hiraeth, a homesickness for a home that was never hers. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation Every emigrant carries two addresses; hiraeth is the postage between them. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation The choir reached the old song's last verse and the whole pub went quiet with hiraeth. 自拟例句 our own example, not a quotation OED 已收（2020）。 英文正式写作可用，通常斜体并点明威尔士出身。 写它时别顺手写成「威尔士人独有的情感」——那是浪漫化叙事；想家这件事，谁都会。
In the OED (2020). Fine in formal English, usually italicized with its Welshness noted. Just don’t write “an emotion only the Welsh can feel” — that is the romantic myth. Missing home is universal.