writing on the wall

Meaning: (idiomatic)Anominouswarning; apredictionofbad luck.He could see thewriting on the wallmonths before the business failed.1965,Noël Coward, “Note on ‘The Sixties’”, inThe Lyrics, London:William Heinemann,→OCLC, page361:However, regardless of evil portents, prophetic despair and a great deal too muchwriting on the wall, I have managed so far to write two fairly cheerful musical comedies.2011, M. P. Prabhakaran, “Goa was Not a Settler Colony as Falkland is”, inLetters on India The New York Times Did Not Publish, Pittsburgh, Pa.: RoseDog Books,→ISBN, page43:The Portuguese refused to read thewritings on the walland clung to their colonies, including the one in India.2012, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Global Rebalancing: Crisis and the East-South Turn”, in Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Jongtae Kim, editors,Globalization and Development in East Asia(Routledge Studies in Emerging Societies; 2), New York, N.Y.; Abingdon, Oxon.:Routledge,→ISBN, page36:Without a doubt these trends represent the "next big thing". Consider a sampling of recent headlines aswritings on the wall:[…]2014, Daniel Carnahan,The Manipulator,[Bloomington, Ind.]:Trafford Publishing,→ISBN, page594:Don't you see the implications andwritings on the wallfor our family's future?2014September 15, Rhonda Cook, “Regulator may push for state-mandated Taser training”, inThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution‎[1], archived fromthe originalon25 October 2016:It gets to the point to where you see so muchwriting on the wallwhere we may not have a choice but to step in and say 'yes, you will train every year and you'll report that training to POST' in order for things to be done right.2022February 23, Benedict le Vay, “Part of rail's past... present... and future”, inRAIL, number951, pages53–54:As a railwayman put it to me: "When I saw chums of mine took their families down there by car, I could see thewriting on the wall. We all had free passes, yet they got the car out!"

Examples:

EN: You with your "writing on the wall".
ES: Tú y tus "escritos en las paredes".
EN: This,Sir,Carlings papers, note on the envelope it's links up with the writing on the wall
ES: Esto, señor. Los documentos de Carling. Nada en el sobre.
EN: I've seen the writing on the wall.
ES: Lo he visto escrito en la pared.
EN: That little remark could be the writing on the wall.
ES: Me lo veía venir.
EN: The writing on the wall.
ES: El escrito en la pared.
EN: This time I was caught writing on the wall.
ES: Esta vez me cogieron escribiendo en la pared.
EN: On that particular day the whips, I think, tried to explain to him that it might have been worse and that sort of thing, but those of us who were with him could see the writing on the wall by that time.
ES: Durante ese día en particular, creo, los golpes trataron de explicarle que habría sido peor y ese tipo de cosas, pero los que nos encontrábamos con él pudimos darnos cuentas que se lo tomaba de otra forma.
EN: B'god! It's a second feast of belshazzar! With hickey to do the writing on the wall!
ES: ¡Dios mío, si es la segunda fiesta del rey Baltasar, ...pero con Hickey escribiendo en los muros!
EN: - Charity is its own reward, for those who can read the writing on the wall.
ES: La caridad tiene una recompensa para aquellos que saben leer lo que hay escrito en la pared.
EN: - The writing on the wall. That strange old man was right.
ES: "Lo escrito en la pared", dijo aquel viejo.
EN: I can see the writing on the wall, Jimmy.
ES: Me doy cuenta de lo que está pasando, Jimmy,
EN: Oh, God, I can see the writing on the wall.
ES: -Ay, Dios, lo puedo ver escrito.
EN: And I just didn't look at the writing on the wall, so she's kind of...
ES: No he prestado atención a las señales y ella está como...
EN: I have seen the writing on the wall
ES: He visto la escritura en el muro.
EN: I see the writing on the wall
ES: Veo la escritura en la pared

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).