Blighty
/ˈblʌɪti
/noun British
1An informal term for Britain or England, used by soldiers of the First and Second World Wars.
1.1 military slang A wound suffered by a soldier in the First World War which was sufficiently serious to merit being shipped home to Britain: he had copped a Blighty and was on his way home...
- He copped a blighty over in Flanders and he was sent over here to recover.
- Inflicting or otherwise causing a blighty wound was considered a capital offense, which was punishable by execution by a firing squad.
- A few nights later he copped a Blighty bullet in his leg and I last saw him in Dover Hospital in 1943.
Origin
First used by soldiers in the Indian army; Anglo-Indian alteration of Urdu bilāyatī, wilāyatī 'foreign, European', from Arabic wilāyat, wilāya 'dominion, district'.
It was British soldiers serving in India who first started calling their homeland Blighty. The word was an alteration of Urdu bilāyatī ‘foreign, European’, which came from Arabic wilāyat ‘country, district’. During the First World War soldiers hoped for a blighty one—a wound not too serious but bad enough to get safe passage home.
Rhymes
- persifleur
- persimmon
- persist
- persistence
- persistence characteristic
- persistency
- persistent
- persistently
- persistent organic pollutant
- persistent vegetative state
- persister
- persistingly
- persistive
- persistive vegetative state
- perskeet
- perskiet
- perskit
- persnicketiness
- persnickety
- persnickitiness
- persnickityness
- person
- -person
- persona
- personable