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

[Dan Goncharoff]

Google Books has a snippet from the journal Electrical West dated 1936 (but
unverified):

FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 25
Trouble is they start rebuilding up on cloud nine instead of digging down
into the muck and dirt of humanity to bed rock and starting the foundations
on hard fact.” “But I thought you just said that it was the human
weaknesses of men that made ...

Electrical West was founded in 1895, so the dating is not unreasonable, and
the journal was also from San Francisco.

DanG


On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 7:31 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org