I knew, of course, that Blighty was an old-fashioned term for Britain, and I had the idea that it came from Hindustani, but having looked it up I find the details interesting enough to post. Wikipedia says:
“Blighty” is a British English slang term for Great Britain, or often specifically England. 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. From World War I and afterward, that use of the term became widespread.
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. The Bengali word is a loan of Indian Persian vilāyatī (ولایاتی), from vilāyat (ولایت) meaning ‘Iran’ and later ‘Europe’ or ‘Britain’, ultimately from Arabic wilāyah ولاية meaning ‘state, province’. […]
Blighty is commonly used as a term of endearment by the expatriate British community or those on holiday to refer to home. 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.
Wiktionary also refers to Hobson-Jobson, but I can’t find the word in either my fat paperback copy or the online versions I’ve checked — the relevant entry seems to be this one:
BILAYUT, BILLAIT, &c. n.p. Europe. The word is properly Ar. Wilāyat, ‘a kingdom, a province,’ variously used with specific denotation, as the Afghans term their own country often by this name; and in India again it has come to be employed for distant Europe. In Sicily Il Regno is used for the interior of the island, as we use Mofussil in India. Wilāyat is the usual form in Bombay.
The OED (entry revised 2014) just says “< Urdu bilāyatī, regional variant of vilāyatī vilayati adj.”; the real meat is at that vilayati entry (first added in 2014). The definition is “South Asian. A foreigner; (originally) esp. an English, British, or European person,” and the etymology:
< (i) Urdu vilāyatī (also regional bilāyatī) and its etymon (ii) Persian vilāyatī foreign, especially British or European < vilāyat inhabited country, dominion, district (see Vilayat n.) + ‑ī, suffix forming adjectives expressing belonging (see ‑i suffix²).
Notes
The Urdu adjective is also reflected in occasional earlier borrowings of phrases, as e.g. Belattee Sahib, Blighty Sahib, literally ‘foreign gentleman’ (1833 or earlier; < vilāyatī šāḥib; compare sahib n.) and belaitee panee, belati pani soda water (1835 or earlier; < Urdu vilāyatī pānī, literally ‘foreign water’; compare pani n.).
In any case, it’s an enjoyable word, and I’m sorry it fell out of fashion.
My impression is that it was used by homesick colonists and services personnel rather then by people in Blighty itself, in which case its decline was due to changes in not fashion but geopolitics.
I believe the Bengali word is used quite a bit in this film, in regard to a proposed boycott of foreign goods. My memory is that the word was pronounced ‘Bill-a-tee or ‘Bell-a-tee, so I did not make the connection with “Blighty”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghare_Baire_(film)
used by homesick colonists
I think mollymolly’s right that it’s not used much in Blighty itself.
This colonist uses it pejoratively as in thank heck I no longer have to put up with that benighted blighted place.
(Private Eye used to run a weekly gardening column written by ‘Rose Blight’ telling how the country was going to the dogs.)
This seems connected – thematically rather than linguistically – to the various ‘gall’ names we’ve discussed in the past. ‘Foreigners’ meaning specifically THOSE foreigners.
(And kind of the opposite of the various languages who call all Europeans ‘Franks’, since that’s specific->general rather than general->specific)
Pretty sure I picked it up from Blackadder Goes Forth, where Lt. George uses it quite fondly.
I associate it mostly with “a blighty one”, a WW1 Brit soldier’s term for a wound which is non-lethal and will get you invalided out and sent back home.
Blighty is the Place for Me
https://www.thegoonshow.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=African_Incident_(transcript)
The one person I knew who used Blighty a lot was someone who had grown up in Britain, then moved to New Zealand as an adult. It was his usual jocular way of referring to the country he had come from. Perhaps AntC can tell us if this a common usage in that milleu.
I’ve seen it pretty often, online, from what seems to be that milieu. Had no idea of the etymology, which seems to be a cross-linguistic pun.
Perhaps AntC can tell us if this a common usage in that milleu.
(You seem to be describing me 😉
I don’t hang out with other expats. I’m the only person I know who uses Blighty that way (or at all). New Zealanders look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. Also they don’t get Goon Show references nor even Wallace & Gromit. I had to train up the cheese specialist in the trendy City-centre market.
They don’t know about Wallace and Gromit in NZ? Now that’s benighted…
Incidentally, I recently discovered on YouTube another Nick Park series, Creature Comforts, that I hadn’t known about. About eight minutes of silliness per episode. An example.
the various languages who call all Europeans ‘Franks’, since that’s specific->general rather than general->specific
Not the same, but it reminds me of a footnote in Mérimée’s “Carmen”, where Carmen guesses that the narrator is English:
My friend Michael who had moved from Britain to New Zealand also complained about the relative lack of “good hobbit food” in New Zealand and Australia. He was an unusual guy—but I assume that AntC is rather unusual as well.
I think the Hobson-Jobson they had in mind was this one, which also says nothing of blighty. Whether that’s a problem seems to depend on what word “the word” intends in Wiktionary.
Ah, good find and good conundrum.
By “the word” Wiktionary apparently means the Hindustani one in Hobson-Jobson. It’s just poorly written. The absence of “Blighty” in Hobson-Jobson is good reason to believe that that spelling hadn’t been invented yet in 1886. “Wilayat”, “Belait”, etc. go back to the early 1800s; the OED has them in a separate entry at Vilayat.
I know “vilayet” from Balkan history, where it was the late Ottoman term for “province” or “oblast” or whatever you think the generic word should be. I can see the phonological parallel to Blighty, but the semantic connection is … unexpected.
Also, Ypres 1914.
Rushdie used vilayet a lot in The Satanic Verses as a way to refer to London (or Britain more broadly)
the various languages who call all Europeans ‘Franks’
There are quite a few of these pars pro toto ethnic exonyms about. Allemands, Graeci … in Kusaal, all the Moba are called Bim, not just their Bemba subgroup, and all the Bisa are called Baris (singular, Barig), not just the Bisa Bareka (who live east of the White Volta.)
A number of West African languages call Europeans “Fulɓe”, presumably on the grounds that all pasty-looking foreigners are pretty much the same.
“Boston man” meant “white man” more generally* in Chinook Jargon. Possibly influenced by Canadian French “bostonnais” for American more generally.
*Or perhaps just “American” more generally, with “King George man” labeling the other locally-common genre of white man.
That reminds me of Philadelphia lawyer, although I don’t think that made it into Chinook Jargon.
The Halkomelem verb for “speak English” is literally “to King-George.”
Brett : yeah, I was wondering about etymology of “blighty” some time ago, and was somewhat, but not very, interested that it’s related to “вилаети”. After 1872 it shifted to mostly refer to the border regions of the Exarchy (rather than all вилаети) where Bulgarians were persecuted and under assimilation pressure by Greeks under the Millet system.
It has expanded its semantic range somewhat since the abolition of the виалети and the consolidation of modern nation states since WWI. But yeah, in the first half of the 19th century вилает meant roughly the same as Ottoman “Eyalet”.
I think I may have learned “Blighty” from Brian Eno.
The OED (entry revised 2014)
It’s another of the World War I words revised to mark the centennial. In that commentary, when they say Kipling used the word, they mean the adjective, which he spelled “belaiti”. Kipling never used the spelling “Blighty”, at least not in print — by World War I maybe he was too old to take up the latest slang?
I quite like the image of the Hon. Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno as a retired-imperialist Col. Blimp type figure residing in Tunbridge Wells after decades of service to the Raj as an officer in the nth Bengal Lancers or what have you. But googling suggests that ktschwarz may be referring to a detail of the lyrics of “Back in Judy’s Jungle” I had never previously noticed.
The Queen Is Dead starts with “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty”.
(The Smiths, for anyone who is puzzled. Includes a line that I quite like: “But when you’re tied to your mother’s apron, no-one talks about castration”, referring to Charles, of course.)
I had no idea that Blighty wasn’t an alteration of Britain! I wonder if there’s been some phonosemantic matching stuff going on there – though of course the spelling hides the vowel mismatch.
I think I’ve seen the word vilayat and/or vilayeti somewhere, and vaguely knew it was a kind of district in ~Middle-Eastern-ish regions, but if so I’ve forgotten the context. I definitely wouldn’t have guessed that “Blighty” had anything to do with it.
JWB, that’s the one. I can’t be sure, but it seems like the kind of word I would have learned from British music of that era.
Bathrobe : I’m a fan of The Smiths, for what it’s worth.
Vilayet is certainly used by the Punjabi diaspora in the UK to mean England, as evidenced by Mohinder Kaur Bhamra’s 1980 classic Ni aae na vilayat kuriye, ‘Don’t come to England, girls’ (as far as my very dismal Punjabi can manage). The song is about the dangers of marrying a handsome chap who will bring you to the UK, where you end up sitting at a sewing machine in a cold basement instead of living a life of luxury. I live in a town, not far from her home in Southall, where Punjabi is very widely spoken (along with about 200 other languages) so I was able to ask a couple of people about it, and although my pronunciation is so bad that I had to give the English translation before we sorted it out, Vilayet, pronounced V’lait, is quite normal current usage.
Southall is probably the only railway station in the UK which uses Gurkhali script on its signage, I think.
Fascinating, thanks very much for that!
If the link was meant to go to a performance of the song, there is a mistake; it goes to the top of this thread
Woops, I didn’t even click on it. Come back, Kim, and fix your link!
Yikes! Sorry
https://youtu.be/-8BzBQqJ36o
It’s a good song.
https://youtu.be/jQvynqKuSR8 is even better, and has tractors
It’s a good song.
It is indeed; thanks for the link!
“Music Publisher: Kuljit Bhamra
Composer: Kuljit Bhamra
Lyricist: Traditional
Auto-generated by YouTube.”
Yes indeed! Kuljit is her son. A very good percussionist and a very good producer, although I don’t know if he actually played on this track.The lyrics are certainly not traditional, but written by Manjit Khaira, according to Gayatri Gopinath in Impossible Desires. I have now thoroughly exhausted my knowledge of Punjabi and the sauna in the local gym is out of order so I am not sure when I will be able to learn more.
Really, all music videos should have tractors.
Thank you, Kim!