We’re having a whale of a time on Cloud 9 with another collection of odd English idioms.
If you’re new to these roundups, I share a weekly phrase origin over on my LinkedIn. Because you can never have too much of a good thing, I recap them all here every month as well.
And now, on with the phrases!
“on the Ball”
⚽ This one means someone is alert and on top of things.
A popular explanation for this one is that it refers to a time ball: introduced in the early 1800s, these were large spherical objects that were suspended from the tops of tall buildings and raised and then dropped at a set time.
The original intent was so that ship captains could see the exact time from a distance and set there navigational instruments, though it soon caught on as a trendy way to standardise time throughout the UK. Greenwich Observatory claims to be the specific inspiration for the phrase. ⌛
Amazing story, right? Unfortunately, the sources I was able to find don’t buy it.
The alternative is that we got it from sports. Some people believe it refers to being “on the balls of your feet” (as if you were about to start a race) but the more likely explanation seems to be that it came from a sport played with a ball.
One theory is that it was born out of another familiar phrase “keep your eye on the ball” (which itself may have come from baseball or rounders). It may also have come from baseball players being said to have “something on the ball”, meaning pitchers who threw the ball with some kind of spin or curve to try to outfox batters. ⚾
Being “on the ball” seems to have worked its way into common usage during the first half of the 20th century.
“Having a Whale of a Time.”
🐋 This one means, quite simply, that you’re having a wonderful time.
Are whales secret party animals? Well, they do like a good sing-song.
Actually, the phrase seems to be referring to the notable size of these marine mammals, rather than their love of a shindig. 🐳
Michael Quinion at World Wide Words traces the origins of this phrase back as far as the 1830s, where people would use “whaler” (probably meaning the immense ships used for whale hunting) to emphasise how big or audacious something was. He quotes a Glasgow newspaper from 1832:
“They fib by equivocation — they don’t come plump out, with a tremendous whaler of a fib, but seek to do it by equivocation and confusion of words and ideas, but, in any way, it is all fibbing.”
Whales were obviously on people’s mind during the 1800s as they soon began to use them as a metaphor for someone being rather keen on something or able to consume a lot of it (they might have said “he’s a whale for the theatre”). From there, it came to mean someone who was particularly skilful at something, resulting in some phrases that definitely wouldn’t mean the same to us now as they did then. I’m not sure Andy Murray would appreciate being told he’s a whale at tennis. 🎾
“A whale of a…”, meaning something large or particularly special, seems to have emerged towards the end of the 19th century. Why a “whale of a time” is still swimming around when our linguistic obsession with these titans of the sea seems to have disappeared isn’t clear but I’m glad it has – it’s a delight to say.
“Sling Your Hook.”
🪝This one is a rather impolite (but fun) way of telling someone to go away.
The phrase is British and dates back as far as the 19th century. According to Worldwide Words, it seems to be a successor to an even earlier one: sling your Daniel. Who or what Daniel was is anyone’s guess…
For hooks though, we have several possible explanations to choose from…
⚓ The most popular and most likely is that it’s referring to raising a ship’s anchor so that it can move off.
⛏️ Another says that it refers to minors collecting their street clothes from a hook at the end of the working day, although where the slinging comes in isn’t clear.
🪝 A third suggests that it refers to a worker who used a hooked tool as part of their job, like a docker, slinging the tool over their shoulder when work was done or they were turned away.
“On Cloud 9”
☁ This one means you’re blissfully happy.
Cloud 9 is actually an upgrade of sorts. Before we settled on it, we were also quite taken with clouds 7 and 8, although they weren’t necessarily blissful paradises…
The phrase seems to have started life as a way of describing people who weren’t quite with it due to intoxication. Cloud 8 in particular is described in The Underworld Speaks by Albin Pollock (1939) as “befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor.” 🥴
In the years that followed, we see clouds of various numerical values being used to describe people who are out of touch with reality due to daydreaming (in the way you’d say someone had their head in the clouds). People are instructed to “come down off Cloud 8” and start putting the work in.
It’s not until the 1950s that the phrase really starts to resemble the one we know, though for a long while, it looked like 7 would win out as the number of choice. Sources I found suggest that’s likely because of 7’s status as a “lucky number” or the religious concept of “7th heaven”. ⛅
How 9 eventually came to win us over, we’re not quite sure. It could simply be that people are always looking for ways to go 1 (or 2) better or it could be because of other phrases to do with the number 9, like “dressed to the nines” or “the whole 9 yards.”
What is certain though is that things are looking rather quiet on clouds 7 and 8 these days. Maybe worth compromising on absolute bliss and going for “pretty chuffed” to dodge the crowds?
That’s it for February, so it’s time for me to sling my hook for now. If you’d like to get in on the action for March, feel free to join me over on my LinkedIn. Alternatively, just wait for the multi-pack coming in early April. And if you have a favourite idiom, I’d love to hear it!
P.S: No daniels were slung (or harmed) in the making of this post.
Anna Lodwick 