blighty
/ˈblaɪti/
blighty is the alternative form of Blighty.
Proper noun capitalized: Blighty
Blighty
- Great Britain, Britain, or England, especially as viewed from abroad.
- Before I knew it, 8 August had come around and our holiday was over. As my lovely little family headed for the airport to jump ship back to Blighty, I was on the road again with fresh legs.2016, Chris Graham, Five Minutes of Amazing: My Journey Through Dementia, London: Sphere, →ISBN, page 129
- Living in the US, I have always seized every opportunity to insist things are better in Blighty. But now both countries look ludicrous[.]2022 January 18, Arwa Mahdawi, “Which is more dysfunctional – the US or the UK? I’ve created a Global Embarrassment Index to figure it out”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- A locality in the Edward River council area, southern New South Wales, Australia.
Noun capitalized: Blighty
Blighty (plural Blighties)
- Synonym of Blighty one.
- The ones who did get a good Blighty were returned to England.2007, Frances Itani, Deafening, →ISBN
- Well maybe I'll have luck this time in the shape of a decent little “Blighty” as its^([sic]) the only way out of it for a while.2010, Y.A. Bennett, Kiss the kids for dad, Don’t forget to write, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- Blighty one
Synonyms of blighty
Forms of blighty
| plural | blighties |
|---|---|
| plural | Blighties |
Origin of blighty
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...
Words formed from blighty
Phrases with blighty
Words that rhyme with blighty
Questions about blighty
- What does blighty mean?
- Blighty means great Britain, Britain, or England, especially as viewed from abroad.
- What is blighty the alternative form of?
- Blighty is the alternative form of Blighty.
- What part of speech is blighty?
- Blighty can be a proper noun or a noun.
- How do you pronounce blighty?
- Blighty is pronounced /ˈblaɪti/.
Words near blighty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blighty (page history and authors); Blighty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Blighty.wav.
Cite this entry: “blighty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blighty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.