Listen one more time I'm doin' fine, up here on cloud nine I left home, seekin' a job that I never did findĭepressed and downhearted I took to cloud nine He disrespected mama, and treated us like dirt Listen, my father didn't know the meaning of work
Needed something to ease my troubled mind We hardly had enough food or room to sleep It was a one room shack that slept ten other children besides me You see, I was born and raised in the slums of the city See other phrases that were coined in the USA.Childhood part of my life, it wasn't very pretty Linguistic hype being what it is, we now hear people expressing their happiness with the inflationary 'cloud ten', which brings us back to the cumulonimbus/Buddhist theories. That has probably been influenced by the use of 'cloud nine' in popular music - George Harrison adopted the term as the title of his 1987 album and, more notably, The Temptations' 'psychedelic soul' album of the same name, in 1969. Since the 1980s or so, 'cloud nine' has become predominant. This early preference for seven as the significant number may have been influenced by the existing phrase 'seventh heaven'. "Cloud seven - completely happy, perfectly satisfied in a euphoric state." The early favourite was 'cloud seven' and many of the oldest citations use that form, as in this piece from The Dictionary of American Slang, 1960, which was the first printed definition of the term "That stuff is way up on Cloud Thirty-nine."
"I think he has thought of everything, unless the authorities pull something new on him out of cloud nine."Īround the same period we find clouds seven and thirty-nine, in The San Mateo Times, April 1952 and Ross’s Hustlers, 1956, respectively: 'Cloud nine' comes a little later, for example, in The Oxnard Press-Courier, August 1946: "Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor." The early references all come from mid 20th century USA and the earliest that I've found is in Albin Pollock's directory of slang, The Underworld Speaks, 1935: The imagery was originally of a 'cloud cuckoo land' or 'head in the clouds' dreaminess, induced by either intoxication or inspiration, rather than the 'idyllic happiness' that we now associate with the phrase. It seems that it is the clouds themselves, rather than the number of them, that were in the thoughts of those who coined this phrase. Early examples of 'cloud' expressions include clouds seven, eight, nine and even thirty-nine. Also, the fact that nine is far from the only number that has been linked with clouds, argues against those origins. To single out the last but one stage of either is rather like attributing the source of the 'whole nine yards' to American Football, where it is ten yards rather than nine that is a significant measure. To begin with, both the cloud classifications and the Buddhist stages to enlightenment have ten levels. Neither of these explanations holds water.
'On cloud nine' is no exception.Ī commonly heard explanation is that the expression originated as one of the classifications of cloud which were defined by the US Weather Bureau in the 1950s, in which 'Cloud Nine' denotes the fluffy cumulonimbus type that are considered so attractive.Īnother explanation is that the phrase derives from Buddhism and that Cloud Nine is one of the stages of the progress to enlightenment of a Bodhisattva (one destined to become a Buddha). Whenever a phrase includes a number, like the whole nine yards, at sixes and sevens etc., then attempts to find its derivation usually focus on the significance of the number. What's the origin of the phrase 'On cloud nine'? To be 'on cloud nine' is to be in a state of blissful happiness.
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