Being on cloud nine means great happiness, euphoria, the very pinnacle of joy, accomplishment, satisfaction, or gratification. But there are other clouds too. In 1955, Tony Bennett recorded an album called Cloud 7. There must have been something about that particular cloud around that time, because a 1954 article in the US Army’s Stars and Stripes magazine included this: “We latched onto an ultimate meetin’ where a local crew was makin’ with the music that liked to rock the roof and everyone was havin’ a ball. Lots of noises, lots of sounds that put us up on cloud seven though we weren’t in the States.”
Likewise, a 1945 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune pointed out that “Any worth-while career takes years of patience and hard work, but why not stop day-dreaming, come in off cloud eight, and get started this year instead of next?” Cloud eight, though, was never the same happy place as clouds seven or nine. It was defined in a 1935 glossary as “befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor.”
It looks at first glance like there might be an out-of-sequence progression in cloud expressions, with cloud eight used in the 1930s, seven in the forties and fifties, and then nine later. But in 1947 there was a boat called Cloud Nine in a race around Catalina Island, near Los Angeles. And in 1955, a player for the New York Giants (a baseball team at the time) was described this way: “Dusty Rhodes of the Giants admitted today he will have to come down off cloud nine pretty soon and go to work again.”
When it comes to clouds, you can never be sure where they originate. Even numbered ones. Still, there are some possibilities. Cloud nine might be related to other “nine” expressions like “the whole nine yards,” or “dressed to the nines.” There’s also the old US Weather Bureau classification system for clouds at different altitudes; a cumulonimbus cloud (a thunderhead) was the highest classification (9). And if that isn’t enough, just imagine a mile-wide sphere floating along in the sky. That was a completely serious idea suggested by Buckminster Fuller. In 1960 he designed a huge geodesic ball which, he calculated, would have enough buoyancy (just from warm air) for people to live inside and float around in the air. He called it the “cloud nine tensegrity sphere,” but never explained why you’d be on cloud 9 (or 8 or 7) if you moved in. It was also never entirely clear how you might get back out. Although if you’re on (or in) cloud nine, maybe you wouldn’t want to leave.
