was a favourite of the British Tommies on the Western Front and wherever they found themselves, in both tragedy and triumph. Reporting on the torpedoing of the troopship Aragon in the Mediterranean in December 1917, in which 610 men died, a newspaper quoted one survivor as saying,

Men's magazines: an A–Z - Blighty". Magforum.com. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013 . Retrieved 20 March 2014. Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/. Vowels piano.” 5 Indeed, Godfrey sat in for a time as Dorothy Ward’s pianist on the stage (“Melodyland,” The Era, 20September 1916, p. 14), so he evidently was quite comfortable playing in public. White, Peter (24 June 2013). "Blighty closes as Drama opens for UKTV". www.broadcastnow.co.uk. Media Business Insight Limited . Retrieved 20 March 2014.

Factsheet for Blighty, n. & adj.²

The length of the list of known Blighty recordings attests to the song’s popularity over the 100 years since it first captured the public’s ear. One of the more unusual, and moving, versions is that of British blues singer Kevin Coyne, on his 1978 LP Dynamite Daze. Another unexpected tribute came in 1986 from the influential British The word derives from the Urdu word Viletī, (older sources mention a regional Hindustani language but the use of b replacing v is found in Bengali) meaning 'foreign', [4] which more specifically came to mean 'European', and 'British; English' during the time of the British Raj. [5] The Bengali word is a loan of Indian Persian vilāyatī ( ولایاتی), from vilāyat ( ولایت) meaning 'Iran' and later 'Europe' or 'Britain', [6] ultimately from Arabic wilāyah ولاية‎ meaning 'state, province'. The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.

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. song’s association with the First World War is almost iconic. Noël Coward borrowed Blighty for his sprawling 1931 stage production Cavalcade, about British life in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the Academy Award–winning 1933 film version, however, Coward dropped Blighty in favour of another Godfrey song, Take Noël Coward used the song for his 1931 stage production Cavalcade, about British life in the first two decades of the twentieth century and in the 1944 film This Happy Breed. [ citation needed] It was also used in the 1954 Errol Flynn film Lilacs in the Spring. [ citation needed] The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress. Blighty became the greatest hit of Fred Godfrey’s early career. Years later, in 1929, he was induced to appear on the Variety stage with Irish tenor Tom E. Finglass. The act featured Godfrey’s best-known chorus songs — with Fred on piano, an ever-present fag hanging from his lip — and Blighty was their big finish. After their 11 November 1929 appearance at the Exeter Hippodrome, the local newspaper’s reviewer gushed,

In an undated interview, Godfrey had a more modest recollection of how the song came about: “At the old Oxford Music Hall there was a show called ‘Blighty.’ Bennett Scott, A.J. Mills and I were going by, and one of us suddenly Blighty, Christmas 1917". Digital.nls.uk. The War Office, The Admiralty, The Red Cross . Retrieved 13 February 2014.

a b "Why Do the Brits Call the U.K. 'Blighty'?", on Anglophenia, BBC America. Accessed 30 December 2020. Coward favoured Blighty once again, having returning Tommies sing it as the camera pans over the London streets of 1919 from high above in the film’s opening sequence.British singer Kevin Coyne also released a version on his 1978 album Dynamite Daze, with piano accompaniment by Tim Rice. [4] [5] Use in other media [ edit ] This article is about the slang term for Britain. For other uses, see Blighty (disambiguation). A World War I example of trench art: a shell case engraved with a picture of two wounded Tommies nearing the White Cliffs of Dover with the inscription "Blighty!" Fred Godfrey wrote the song with Bennett Scott and A.J. Mills after passing a music hall in Oxford where a show called Blighty was showing. He recounts: "One of us suddenly said “What an idea for a song!” Four hours later it was all finished, and the whole country was singing it soon afterwards. I got — not very much." [1] [2]