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

[Ben Zimmer]

The 1936 cite is confirmed on Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/sim_electrical-west_1936-12_77_6/page/25/mode/1up
Electrical West, Dec. 1936 (Vol. 77, Issue 6), p. 25, col. 3

I see that was previously discovered by a contributor to this Reddit thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/2usyme/on_cloud_nine/

...who also found an even earlier antedating:

https://books.google.com/books?id=-vcEAQAAIAAJ
_Ceiling Zero: a play in three acts_, by Frank Wead, copyright 1934.
"Mike doesn't know what it's all about. He's in Cloud Nine or ginned up
most of the time."

The Reddit contributor ("gnorrn") says: "This play was made into a 1936
movie of the same name, which could have helped popularize the phrase."


On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 2:56 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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."
> >
> >
>

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