Cloud Nine

cumulonimbus cloud

You have probably heard of someone being "on cloud nine" as meaning being in a state of blissful happiness.

I never gave thought about its origin before, but I was reading about, oddly enough, contemplative prayer The Cloud of Unknowing) and a reference was made to cloud nine as something from Buddhism.

I have to say that my own associations with the term are more with the "psychedelic soul" song, "Cloud Nine," by The Temptations and the Cloud 9 album by George Harrison.

Looking for the etymology, I found most frequently references to Buddhism and to the study of clouds.

There is an actual (but old) International Cloud Atlas which defines types of cloud. (Not to be confused with Cloud Atlas: A Novel and the film version of the novel - both of which befuddled me.)  The atlas defines the ninth cloud as the cumulonimbus, which rises to 10 km (6.2 miles), the highest a cloud can be.

In Buddhism, it supposedly is a reference to the state of being that is the penultimate goal of the Bhodisattva.
A flaw in both these origins is that there are ten stages in the progress of the Bodhisattva, and there are actually ten levels of clouds.

Another reference is to in Dante's Paradise section of the Divine Comedy where the 9th level of heaven is closest to the Divine Presence, which itself dwells at the 10th and highest heaven.

In all three instances 9 is not the top.

Another pop culture reference I found is to a 1950s radio show called "Johnny Dollar" in which every time the hero was knocked unconscious he was transported to Cloud Nine. The 1950s fits in with the Cloud Atlas of that period, but there are earlier references to cloud nine.

I suppose that if the old atlas only had 9 levels, that may have influenced the usage. I can think of other "nine" references in our popular usage where the nine seems an odd choice. There is the 'whole nine yards' in American Football, where it is ten yards rather than nine that is a significant measure for a first down. And we also say someone is "dressed to the nines" as being very fancily dressed.

It seems that even earlier the phrase "head in the clouds" to mean a kind of dreaminess, induced by either intoxication or inspiration, was used. A 1935 directory of slang, The Underworld Speaks, gives the examples of "Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor."

The Dictionary of American Slang (1960) might be the first printed definition of the term cloud nine as we use. At that point in time, the term had close association with the euphoria that is induced by alcohol and drugs.

Norman Conquest and English

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, rallying Duke William's troops during the Battle of Hastings in 1066

It was on this day, September 28, 1066 that William the Conqueror of Normandy arrived on British soil. He defeated the British in the Battle of Hastings, and on Christmas Day, he was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

The reason I post it here is that it turned out to have a tremendous effect on the English language.

The British back then were speaking a combination of Saxon and Old Norse. The Normans spoke French. Over time, the languages blended, and as a result English became a language incredibly rich in synonyms.

Because the French speakers were aristocrats, the French words often became the fancy words for things. The Normans gave us “mansion”; the Saxons gave us “house.” The Normans gave us “beef”; the Saxons gave us, “cow.”

The English language has gone on accepting additions to its vocabulary ever since, and it now contains more than a million words, making it one of the most diverse languages on Earth.

Source: WritersAlmanac.org

Pogo Stick

A pogo stick is a device for jumping off the ground in a standing position, through the aid of a spring.

They can be used as a toy, exercise equipment, or extreme sports instrument. It has had peaks and valleys in its popularity. It was very popular in the late 1960s and 70s, and is enjoying some renewed popularity now in extreme sports via the new sport of extreme pogo or "Xpogo".

It consists of a pole with a handle at the top and footrests near the bottom, and a spring located somewhere along the pole. The spring joins two sections of the pole, which extends below the footpads. It can be steered by shifting one's weight off the centerline of the spring in the desired horizontal direction thus producing horizontal locomotion.

A pogo stick that was not called a pogo stick was patented in 1891 by George H. Herrington of Wichita, Kansas "for leaping great distances and heights". This was an antecedent of the pogo stick as well as today's spring stilts.

We can call the pogo stick an eponym because the modern pogo stick name supposedly comes from a redesigned version that looks like the one we know by Hans Pohlig and Ernst Gottschall whose combined names give us "PoGo." They applied for a German patent in 1920 and described their device as a "spring end hopping stilt."

Glitch

Right off, I have to say that although the term "glitch" is in common use, the origins and etymology of  it are unclear.

It has come to mean "a short-lived fault in a system." It is often used to describe a transient fault that corrects itself, and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, and among players of video games.

It seems to first come into use in the late-1950s within the military and space program, but it didn't appear in the media until the early-1960s in the context of unforeseen technical errors in space travel. Astronaut John Glenn used the word in his 1962 book, Into Orbit: "Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was 'glitch'. Literally, a glitch ... is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it."


Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says the term comes from the German word glitschen ("to slip") and the Yiddish word gletshn ("to slide or skid").

In 1965, Time Magazine felt the need to define it when using it in an article: "Glitches—a spaceman's word for irritating disturbances."

Glitch was used to describe a computer bug that many feared would cause an apocalyptic crisis named Y2K. The term fit in that the bang turned out to be a whimper.

On the other hand, it was also used to describe issues with the launch of the HealthCare.gov website. In that case, it is misused considering the issues were much more than just a "short-lived fault in a system that corrects itself."

Contronyms

I first came across the term contronym when I was teaching middle school English. They are words that are their own antonyms. In other words, they mean something and they mean the opposite. That can be confusing.

Take this sentence:  "The company's oversight had become a costly issue."  Did the company overlook a problem or was it that their conscientious overseeing of something was costing someone problems?

Usually, we can tell which meaning from the context.  "The carcass was cleaved" uses it to mean "to plit or sever" (as with a cleaver).  "He cleaves to his beliefs" means not a split but that he clings or adheres to them. Both meanings come from Old English, but from different, though similar words.  Cleave as to adhere comes from clifian. Cleave as in to split comes from clēofan. That word takes forms that apply to that meaning still, like "cloven," as in a type of split hoof and "cleft" as in cleft palate.

Some other contronyms:

Sanction = to give official permission or approval OR to impose a penalty on.

Left = remaining (What's left to eat?) OR departed (Everyone left the room.)

Dust = the noun is that annoying coating on furniture, but the verb is to remove that coating. Similarly, we use "seed." Seeding the lawn adds seeds but seeding a pepper is removing them.

Trim as a verb can mean adding or taking away. If you trim the Christmas tree, you add decorations. But if you trim a tree in the backyard, you are more likely to be cutting away at it.

Fast can mean "moving rapidly" (driving fast) or "fixed, unmoving" (holding fast or colors that are fast and so will not run).

Screen can mean ‘to show’ (a movie) or ‘to hide’ (an unsightly view).

Clip can mean "to bind together" (clip some papers) or "to separate" (as in clippers or clipping coupons from a newspaper).