Blighty.

Though it was used throughout the 1800s in the Indian subcontinent to mean an English or British visitor, it was first used during the Boer War in the specific meaning of homeland for the English or the British. The word ultimately derives from the Persian word viletī, (from a regional Hindustani language with the use of b replacing v) meaning ‘foreign’, which more specifically came to mean ‘European’, and ‘British; English’ during the time of the British Raj. In Hobson-Jobson, an 1886 historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words, Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell explained that the word came to be used in British India for several things the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato and soda water.

Author: languagehat

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