blighty

[ blahy-tee ]

noun

, British Slang.

, plural blight·ies.

1. Often Blighty. Britain, or specifically England, as one's home or native land:

   We're sailing for old Blighty tomorrow.

2. a wound or furlough permitting a soldier to be sent back to Britain from the front.
3. military leave.

blighty

¹

/ ˈblaɪtɪ /

noun

1. another name for white-eye

Blighty

²

/ ˈblaɪtɪ /

noun

1. England; home
2. esp in World War I
   1. Also calleda blighty one a slight wound that causes the recipient to be sent home to England
   2. leave in England

Word History and Origins

Origin of blighty¹

First recorded in 1885–90; from Hindi bilāyatī “the country (i.e., Great Britain),” variant of wilāyatī vilayet

Word History and Origins

Origin of blighty¹

C20: from Hindi bilāyatī foreign land, England, from Arabic wilāyat country, from waliya he rules

Example Sentences

His 80,000-word account of the experience was found in an online auction won by amateur social-historian David Wilkins, who has now published it under the title Blighty or Bust.

From BBC

Not far away is an earlier housing development that is even more redolent of Blighty: Foxhall Village.

From Washington Post

Many folks come here from Blighty to break into America and give up if it doesn’t happen in a year or two.

From Los Angeles Times

The hottest rivalry in sailing heads across the pond to Old Blighty, where Sir Ben Ainslie and his British crew will face the tall task of defending home waters against Tom Slingsby and his crew of seemingly unbeatable Australians.

From Seattle Times

I'm not here, trust me, to deliver some anguished Anglophile cri de coeur about how at least the guardrails of democracy held up in Blighty and in the end the Conservatives showed they had some principles and, gosh, maybe we'd be better off with a parliamentary system.

From Salon