Cloud Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘water’ and now look at ‘cloud’. The original word in Old English referred to a hill – a cloud was called a skie - and look at hills in the distance and you’ll see why the two were confused. Having made that point, it is obvious any ‘cloud’ references have to come after the change from ‘hill’.

Under a cloud is first seen at the end of the 15th century.

In the clouds, fanciful or unreal, is seen from the 1640s.

Cloud nine is recorded by 1950, although the term’s origin is disputed. In the 1950s we also find ‘cloud seven’ with the same inference.

Cloud bursts did not happen until 1817.

Rainclouds were unknown until around 1800 – one has to wonder what they thought came from them before this.

Oort cloud was named in 1949 after Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrick Oort, who proposed the idea that comets came from a mass of bodies orbiting outside that of Pluto. Oort was right.

Cloud cuckoo land is an imaginary city in the air first seen in 1830 after the translation of Aristophanes’ Nephelokkygia (The Birds) from 414BCE. Within a decade of the translation ther term had entered the English language for any dreamland region.

Cloudlet, predictably a small cloud, is seen since 1788 – and yet I have never heard the term used.

Cloudscape, another I have never heard of, is found from 1852.

Cloudless has been used since 1590 – this I have heard and it has always struck me as odd. It’s the same as describing the night sky as ‘sunless’.

Clouds have only had a silver lining since 1843. It comes from John Milton’s work Comus.

Becloud is seen since 1590s, but with two decades it had taken on the figurative sense of ‘to obscure’.

Similarly ‘overcloud’ had the obvious meaning before the figurative ‘to cover with gloom’ from the 1590s.