[Ads-l] antedating "cloud nine" "cloud seven"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED: 1959, 1956.

1942 _San Francisco Chronicle_ (Dec. 25) 1H: The party would have certainly
heard a loud Brooklyn cheer from  up on cloud nine.

1943 _San Francisco Chronicle_ (Apr. 29)  1H:  Discharged from the Navy
because his plasma pressure was somewhere up on cloud seven.

The underlying metaphor is "high." Hence "elated."

JL


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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