Neil is continuing my education, had to look up Blightly . A informal and typically affectionate term for England by soldiers of World War 1 and World War II.
I could be wrong on this KK, but I think as a term, it may have originated in the RAF? Only used these days by old farts like me!
PS: Update. Nope, I'm wrong as a bit of internet surfing reveals that it pre-dates the RAF, going back to Victorian times: " ‘Blighty’ is another one of those Indian words that made it into English during the days of the Raj. It comes from the Hindustani vilayati, which sounds like ‘blighty’ in many regional dialects."
The original 1886 edition of Hobson-Jobson doesn’t mention the word denoting Britain, but ‘Blighty’ passed into British army slang not long afterwards. It certainly appears in soldiers’ letters during the Boer War. The word really caught on in the First World War. Many of the ‘Old Contemptibles’, the professional soldiers who bore the brunt of the early fighting, had served in India. It’s surely also no coincidence that ‘blighter’ was then a very popular expression meaning an irritating or distasteful person.
It’s exactly the sort of harmless vulgarity that Tommy liked. ‘Blighty’ became hugely popular, used in advertisements, music hall songs, and even as the title of a humorous magazine for servicemen. Soldiers in the trenches hoped that if they got hit, they would “catch a Blighty one” – a non-fatal wound that would get them sent home.
‘Blighty’ quickly passed out of vogue. When used during the Second World War, it was generally with mild irony.
