Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

blighty

/ˈblaɪti/ proper noun, noun

Forms blighties

  1. proper noun (originally military slang) Great Britain, Britain, or England, especially as viewed from abroad.
  2. proper noun A locality in the Edward River council area, southern New South Wales, Australia.
  3. noun (military slang) Synonym of Blighty one.

Synonyms

Blighty one

Etymology

Corruption of the Hindustani विलायती (vilāytī) / وِلایَتی (vilāyatī, “foreign”), which is related to Arabic ولاية (wilāyah, “state, province”), whence also, through Turkish, vilayet.
Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell explained in their Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, published in 1886, that the word was used in the names of several kinds of exotic foreign things, especially those that the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato, विलायती बैंगन (vilāytī baiṅgan, literally “foreign aubergine”), and especially to soda water, which was commonly called विलायती पानी (vilāytī pānī, literally “foreign water”).
Blighty was the inevitable British soldier’s corruption of it. But it only came into common use as a term for Britain at the beginning of the First World War in France about 1915. It turns up in popular songs "There’s a ship that’s bound for Blighty", "We wish we were in Blighty", and "Take me back to dear old Blighty, put me on the train for London town", and in Wilfred Owen's poems, as well as many other places.
The sense of a minor wound comes from attributive use of the noun, as in “a Blighty wound,” “a Blighty one,” 1916.
In modern Australian usage, Old – a sentimental reference to Britain, as in Old Country and Old Dart – was added to give Old Blighty.

Sources: Wiktionary — from the Wiktionary entry “blighty”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details