The Uses of Nostalgia

C2 Proficiency · Open Cloze · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

Nostalgia was once regarded (0) ___ a disease. The term was coined in the seventeenth century by a Swiss physician (1) ___ attributed the listlessness of homesick soldiers to an excessive longing for home. (2) ___ severe was the condition thought to be that some sufferers were believed to have died of it. Today, (3) ___ from being considered harmful, nostalgia is increasingly seen as beneficial. Researchers have found that recalling fond memories tends to lift people's spirits, particularly when they are feeling lonely or (4) ___ edge. Nostalgia, it would appear, reminds us that our lives have meaning and that we are loved, or at (5) ___ have been. Not that it is entirely benign. Dwell (6) ___ the past for too long, and the present may come to seem drab by comparison. Marketers, moreover, have been quick to cash (7) ___ on our weakness for all things retro, endlessly reviving the fashions, music and television of decades gone by. The past, it seems, sells, and it sells all the better for (8) ___ glimpsed through rose-tinted spectacles.

The Uses of Nostalgia

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