cloud

I love to take pictures of clouds (here's one of my cloud photos from last spring). And I love to collect quotations about clouds. Leonardo da Vinci called them "bodies without surface," while Victor Hugo described them as "the only birds that never sleep." So where does cloud come from?

According to the AHD, cloud is a development of the Old English word clud, meaning "rock" or "hill," and the OED documents uses of cloud to mean "rock" or "hill" as late as 1480. But cloud was also being used to denote an atmospheric mass as early as the 1300s, and eventually that meaning became the dominant one.

I like the idea that a word for something so very earthly is now used for something so very airy.

And here's a haiku for a close:

kumo oriori

hito ni yasumuru

tsukimi kana

Clouds now and again

give a soul some respite from

moon-gazing--behold

- Basho (trans. B. L. Einbond)