Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

For decades now, American English speakers, when blissfully happy, have claimed to be on cloud nine. Though this is a common expression, accounts of its origin are delightfully mottled.

One version has the US Weather Bureau arranging cloud formations in numerical sequence, with level nine clouds, the cumulonimbus, riding the skies at 40,000 feet. Someone sitting on top of such a towering billow -- a cloud nine -- would be high and blissful indeed.

Another account evokes the mystical quality of the number nine. Nine is a trinity of trinities -- three threes equal nine -- and as such is considered the perfect number.

In Dante's Paradise, the 9th level of heaven is closest to the Divine Presence, which itself dwells at the 10th and highest heaven. This notion may have enhanced the popularity of the expression on cloud nine.

The number nine occurs in at least two other common American cliches: dressed to the nines and the whole nine yards. Coincidentally, both of these expressions have uncertain origins as well.

Radio Script > Cloud Nine