Word.ws English Dictionary

mal du Suisse

mal du Suisse noun: nostalgia or homesickness.

Noun

mal du Suisse (uncountable)

  1. (historical) Nostalgia or homesickness.

Origin of mal du Suisse

From French mal du Suisse (literally “Swiss disease”); coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer (1669–1752), based on its frequent occurrence in Swiss mercenaries who in the plains of Switzerland were pining for their landscapes. At the time it was thought to be accompanied by serious symptoms such as fainting and fever, and potentially fatal.

Questions about mal du Suisse

What does mal du Suisse mean?
Mal du Suisse means nostalgia or homesickness.
What part of speech is mal du Suisse?
Mal du Suisse is a noun.

Words near mal du Suisse in the dictionary

  1. Makynlee
  2. mal
  3. mal de mer
  4. mal du pays
  5. mal du siècle
  6. mal du Suisse
  7. mal mariée
  8. mal mariées
  9. mal-
  10. Mal-ay
  11. mal-developed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mal du Suisse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mal du Suisse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mal_du_suisse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.