Blighty

Meaning

Name

Great Britain, Britain, or England, especially as viewed from abroad.

Noun

Synonym of Blighty one.

Synonyms

England

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

home

🏠

homeland

mother country

motherland

UK

🇬🇧

United Kingdom

Bridgetown

Stratford

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

St. George’s

Neath

Cramlington

Morpeth

Old Blighty

Brummie

Old Dart

Translations

مملكة بريطانيا العظمى وشمال إيرلندا المتحدة،

Regne Unit

Regne Unit de la Gran Bretanya i Irlanda del Nord

Gran Bretanya

Großbritannien

Vereinigtes Königreich

Vereinigtes Königreich Großbritannien und Nordirland

Blighty

Grossbritannien

Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο

Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο της Μεγάλης Βρετανίας και της Βορείου Ιρλανδίας

Βρεταννία

Ἡνωμένο Βασίλειο

Grande-Bretagne

المملكة المتحدة

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈblaɪti/

Etymology

Corruption of the Hindustani विलायती (vilāytī) / وِلایَتی (vilāyatī, “foreign”), which is related to Arabic ولاية (wilāyah, “state, province”), whence also, through Turkish, vilayet.
Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell explained in their Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, published in 1886, that the word was used in the names of several kinds of exotic foreign things, especially those that the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato, विलायती बैंगन (vilāytī baiṅgan, literally “foreign aubergine”), and especially to soda water, which was commonly called विलायती पानी (vilāytī pānī, literally “foreign water”).
Blighty was the inevitable British soldier’s corruption of it. But it only came into common use as a term for Britain at the beginning of the First World War in France about 1915. It turns up in popular songs "There’s a ship that’s bound for Blighty", "We wish we were in Blighty", and "Take me back to dear old Blighty, put me on the train for London town", and in Wilfred Owen's poems, as well as many other places.
The sense of a minor wound comes from attributive use of the noun, as in “a Blighty wound,” “a Blighty one,” 1916.
In modern Australian usage, Old – a sentimental reference to Britain, as in Old Country and Old Dart – was added to give Old Blighty.