Michael Marr wrote:
Sorry, I meant this to go to the list...
>
> Shane F. Ingate wrote:
>
> > emissions gear in Blimey and Oz, did they not, or were they rough idling
>pigs?
>
> I would like to point out that "blimey" is a mild expletive, not an
> alternative name for Great Britain. I believe you may be confusing it
> with "blighty", which was the name given to Great Britain by British
> soldiers in France during the First World War, as in the song "Take me
> back to good old Blighty". In fact, a wound of any kind that did not
> result in a fatality was known as a "blighty" because it meant that the
> wounded soldier would be sent back to the homeland to recuperate. I
> don't know the derivation of the word, but I suspect it may have been a
> Hindi word, learned by soldiers stationed in India during the 18th and
> 19th century.
>
> "Blimey", on the other hand, is a contraction of "God blind me", a
> blasphemy. In fact, you will sometimes hear a Londoner of the older
> generation (younger people tend to use the more Anglo-Saxon oaths) say
> "Gor' Blimey".
>
> So there...
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