Word Stories: Blighty

Steve Taylore-Knowles looks at the stories behind the English language.

One of the more affectionate nicknames of England is Blighty, or Old Blighty. It’s the kind of word that people on holiday or living abroad use to refer jokingly to the motherland, particularly in the context of returning there. ‘So I hear you’re off back to Blighty? Don’t forget your umbrella!’, one jocular soul might say to another.

The word dates from the end of the nineteenth century, a time when Britain’s empire was at its most extensive, and when there was a sizeable community of ex-pats in India. The oldest written reference in the OED was penned by the poet perhaps most associated with that imperial period, Rudyard Kipling, although he spelled it ‘Belait’ in 1886. By the time of the Great War (or World War 1 as it came to be known when everyone decided to have a second one), it had assumed its familiar form.

British soldiers (or ‘Tommies’, after the name sometimes used to represent a typical soldier, Tommy Atkins – a kind of English equivalent of ‘G.I. Joe’) would stand in the trenches in France, up to their ankles in mud, and dream of getting back to Blighty. Many of them would think themselves lucky if they received a wound (‘a blighty’ in the slang of the time) serious enough to get them sent home. Some were so desperate to be re-patriated that they would wound themselves to get back to Blighty, perhaps by shooting themselves in the foot.

The origin is the Hindi word bilayati or wilayati (foreign, especially European). This in turn comes from Arabic wilayat (country, district). In Hindi, the adjective was used to describe various exotic articles the English brought over with them, such as bilayati pani (soda, literally ‘European water’). It was natural that the English of the Raj (‘reign’ in Hindi) picked up the name to refer to the homeland.

Hindi has given us a number of other words through the same imperialistic route, including bangle, bungalow, chutney, dinghy and shampoo.