Blighty

"Blighty" is a British English slang term for Great Britain, or often specifically England. Though it was used throughout the 1800s in the Indian subcontinent to mean an English or British visitor, it was first used during the Boer War in the specific meaning of homeland for the English or the British. From World War I and afterward, that use of the term became widespread.

Etymology

The word ultimately derives from the Persian-derived Bengali word bilētī (or even from regional Hindustani language (i.e., Eastern Hindi) with the use of b replacing v/w), meaning 'foreign', which more specifically came to mean 'European', and 'British'/'English' during the time of the British Raj. The Bengali word bilētī is itself a loan of Indian Persian wilāyatī (ولایاتی), from wilāyat (ولایت) usually to mean 'Iran' and later 'the West', 'Europe' or 'Britain'/'England', ultimately from Arabic wilāyah (ولاية‎) meaning 'state, province'.

The term subsequently gained an ironic connotation in its closeness to the English word blight, which means "epidemic."

Context

Blighty is commonly used as a term of endearment by the expatriate British community or those on holiday to refer to home. In Hobson-Jobson, an 1886 historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words, Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell explained that the word came to be used in British India for several things the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato and soda water.

During the First World War, "Dear Old Blighty" was a common sentimental reference, suggesting a longing for home by soldiers in the trenches. The term was particularly used by World War I poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. During that war, a "Blighty wound" – a wound serious enough to require recuperation away from the trenches but not serious enough to kill or maim the victim – was hoped for by many, and sometimes self-inflicted.