/ˈɛssere al ˈsɛttimo ˈtʃɛlo/ lit. ‘be in seventh heaven’
Italian idiom, everyday. To be extremely happy and delighted.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Italian speaker.
How do people use Essere al settimo cielo
?
Everyday Italian for being blissfully happy, usually about good news, love or a success. Conjugate essere and keep the rest fixed: “sono al settimo cielo”, “ero al settimo cielo”, “Tom era al settimo cielo”. You can add the cause with “per”: “sono al settimo cielo per la promozione”.
Also said al settimo cielo
Essere al settimo cielo
in real sentences
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Sono al settimo cielo.
I’m in seventh heaven.
Tatoeba, sentence by Guybrush88, translation by Dejo, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Ero al settimo cielo.
I was over the moon.
Tatoeba, sentence by Nuel, translation by Nuel, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Essere al settimo cielo
come from?
The picture comes from the old Ptolemaic view of the universe, with the earth wrapped in a stack of heavenly spheres that Dante also used for his Paradiso. The Treccani dictionary explains that Italian keeps a memory of those spheres in common phrases like “salire al terzo cielo” and “essere al settimo cielo”, where being in the highest heavens stands for being as happy as you can get.
Mistakes learners make with Essere al settimo cielo
Getting the preposition wrong. It’s always “al settimo cielo”, never “nel settimo cielo” or “in settimo cielo”, even though English says “in seventh heaven”. And “sulla luna” (on the moon) is a word-for-word copy of the English that Italians won’t recognize.
Other Italian idioms like Essere al settimo cielo
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