blighter

   ‘You lucky blighter’, addressed by one man to another, and references to ‘a poor little blighter’, a child, are now becoming rare in British colloquial speech. The word ‘blighter’ appeared in British slang at the very end of the nineteenth century. Professor Weekley, followed by Eric Partridge, thought that the word may have been suggested by ‘blithering’, and saw it as a euphemism for ‘bugger’, or perhaps ‘bastard’. The word ‘bleeder’ was also in use before ‘blighter’ began to be used, and that too may have needed a euphemism.J. P.Donleavy, in The Ginger Man, has a woman saying to her husband: ‘So you paid it, did you? Here it is. Exactly where I left it and the money gone. Lies. You blighter. You nasty blighter.’ The husband replies: ‘Call me a bugger. I can’t stand the gentility on top of the yelling.’