Up On Cloud Number Nine

If you’re on cloud nine, you’re extremely happy about something. In a state of tremendous bliss and euphoria.

Example:

“Oh, honestly Betty, it’s like a fairytale. I’m in love. I’m on cloud nine!”

“You aren’t on cloud nine Sheila, you’ve got your bloody head in the clouds!”

So if Sheila is so happy, why is she on cloud number nine of all things? Why not another number? Why a cloud at all? Well, as for the number, the most common thought comes from an 1896 atlas of clouds (a riveting read I’m sure) where they were originally divided in to 10 different types (zero through to nine, although meteorologists have inflated this significantly now, probably over a hundred), and 9th in that list was the cumulo-nimbus. And what’s so special about the cumulo-nimbus, exactly?

Cloud number nine isn’t so fine

The cumulo-nimbus is the one cloud that everyone has heard of: the massive, fluffy, impressive looking ones that rise like buildings in the sky, and look like big balls of cotton wool. It is the pin-up supermodel of the cloud world, so if you had to be on any cloud, for any particular reason, you’d probably choose that one, right? Well, as it turns out, probably not.

Cumulo-nimbuses (cumulo-nimbi?) are the big boys. Their name derives from the latin ‘cumulo’, meaning heaped (because the water vapour accumulates upwards via powerful air currents, hence the appearance), and ‘nimbus’, meaning rainstorm. Think of a thunderstorm, lightning, tornadoes, or any other severe weather, and there’s likely one of these guys involved, so in actual fact, it would probably be a terrible place to be.

The earliest known usage of the expression ‘on cloud nine’ (with the same modern day meaning) seems to come from 1949, in the Denton Record Chronicle, about a woman who just landed a movie role and was pretty darn pleased about it:

“Let’s look in on Betty Hutton, who says she is hovering ‘on Cloud No[.] Nine’ these days.”

So good ol’ Betty Hutton invented it then? Not quite.

Should we be on cloud seven instead?

During the same time Betty was landing the role of a lifetime and talking about cloud number nine, there were plenty of clouds getting mentioned, like cloud eight and even cloud 39, which have no meteorological significance and seem completely random in their use. The original phrase, it seems, was more focused on the idea of simply being up in clouds, and wasn’t overly concerned about the numbers attached.

But there are actually far more early examples of being on cloud seven than anywhere else. Here it is being used in The San Mateo Times, way back in 1952:

“Mantovani’s skilled use of reeds and strings puts this disc way up on Cloud Seven.”

The expression was even somewhat standardised in the 1960 edition of The Dictionary of American Slang, confirming that seven, not nine, must have been the most commonly associated number of cloud to express one’s joy and euphoria.

But then, why seven? It isn’t anything to do with luck, as the number often suggests in Western culture, but it actually appears to be a bastardisation of a far older expression: ‘seventh heaven’.

To be ‘in seventh heaven’ has the same meaning as being ‘on cloud nine’ and comes from Judaism and Islam, where it is said that God’s throne sits on the seventh level of heaven: the highest of all things.

From there, it was spun off in to ‘cloud seven’, and from there, supported by this cloud atlas we discussed, we ended up ‘on cloud nine’, because the fluffy, appealing nature of the cumulo-nimbus does conjure up images of heaven, doesn’t it not?

And if there is one thing people like doing with language, it’s muddling it all up and forgetting where it all started, and that’s exactly what has happened here.

Still, we’d probably all be better off keeping our feet on the ground, eh?

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Sources

• https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-cloud-nine.html
• https://knowyourphrase.com/on-cloud-nine
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_cloud#Life_cycle_or_stages
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cloud_nine