the.com/writing on the wall
The doom you saw coming and ignored anyway, for the plot.
means An unmistakable sign that disaster or the end of something is approaching, usually spotted too late to act on.
from From the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible: at a feast, the Babylonian king Belshazzar sees a disembodied hand appear and write mysterious words on the palace wall, which Daniel interprets as a prophecy of the king's downfall and the fall of his kingdom that very night. The phrase entered English as a biblical allusion and settled into everyday use for any obvious portent of doom.
- origin
- Book of Daniel, a literal prophetic hand at a feast
- the prophecy
- King Belshazzar judged and deposed that same night
- modern use
- Now means obvious decline everyone pretends not to notice
- irony
- Warning ignored then was divine, now it is quarterly reports