Blighty

"Blighty" is a British English slang term for Britain or often specifically England. It was first used during the Boer War, though it was not until World War I that the word spread widely.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word derives from "bilayati", a regional variant of the Urdu word "vilayati", meaning "foreign", "British", "English" or "European." In India, vilayati came to be known as an adjective meaning European, and specifically English or British.

Context

The term 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 C. 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 World War I, "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.