My parents used to call each other “Blick” as an ironic term of endearment, and maintained that it was short for “blighter”. Perhaps only for them it was…
Either way, there’s a delicious self-mocking in the word. Whether an Englishman calls his homeland a “Foreign” or a “Blighted” place, there’s a built-in joke. It’s charming.
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There’s a surprising number of pre-WW1 British things that com from India. The word ‘bungalow’ for instance.
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Wrong, they were building a two-storey house one time and decide to “bung a low roof on it”, hence the name.