Blighty

Blighty is a British English slang term for Great Britain, deriving from the Hindustani word bilāyatī (विलायती), meaning "foreign", related to the Arabic word wilayat, meaning a kingdom or province. The term was more common in the later days of the British Raj, but can now be considered self-consciously archaic and, when used by speakers younger than the collapse of the British Empire, is generally intended slightly ironically.

According to World Wide Words, Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C Burnell explained in their Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, published in 1886, that the word came to be used, in British India, for several things the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato (bilayati baingan) and soda water, which was commonly called bilayati pani, or "foreign 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" was also used to mean a wound serious enough to require recuperation away from the trenches.