Origin of the word cloud

[George Preoteasa]

I am reading this in The Week:

Is this all beginning to look clouded, in an “up is down” kind of way? Fair enough — cloud has gone from down to up. The original word, clud, meant “hill, mass of rock” (incidentally, in some parts of England rolling hills are called downs). The related word clod still shows something of this origin. But people looking up at hilly masses in the heavens decided that cloud was a good word to use on them. And now cloud can only mean that lofty mass of water vapor, while we have various other words for humps of earth.

(It’s one of the words in an article about words that radically changed meaning:
http://theweek.com/articles/670758/11-words-whose-meanings-have-completely-changed-over-time?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=afternoon&utm_medium=01_17_17-article_6)

I thought it was interesting, even if the author is not quite right about what a cloud is. Unless vapour is about to change its meaning.

[Maria Ruth]

You might find this Oxford University Press blog entry by etymologist Anatoly Liberman interesting:

http://blog.oup.com/2016/07/cloud-etymology-word-origins/

Funny about vapor (which is invisible). This author defines a cloud as “that mass of vapor we see in the sky.”

 

 

[George Preoteasa]

Amazing! I now know how etymologists work. Thanks for the article!

PS Nice pics too.

[Gavin Pretor-Pinney]

Thanks for the great post, George.

It’s so interesting that the English name for things as ephemeral as clouds derives from something as solid as a mass of rock. I wonder what the equivalent etymologies are for ‘cloud’ in other languages? What about the Dutch name ‘wolk’? They always say that the clouds are the Dutch landscape.

[Author]

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