blighty: [20] Blighty is a legacy of British rule in India. Originally a term used by British soldiers serving in India for ‘home, Britain’, it is an anglicization of Hindi bilāyatī, which meant ‘foreign’, and particularly ‘European’. This was actually a borrowing from Arabic wilāyat ‘district, country’, which was independently acquired by English in the 19th century in its Turkish form vilayet. It was a derivative of the Arabic verb waliya ‘rule’, and is related to walī ‘ruler’.
