# the writing on the wall

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-writing-on-the-wall
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A clear sign that something, especially failure or disaster, is on its way.

## Examples

- When sales fell for a third year, the staff saw the writing on the wall.
- Long before the plant actually closed, the writing on the wall was there for anyone who cared to look.
- Executives who ignore the writing on the wall — flat revenue, restless investors, a founder heading for the door — rarely get a second warning.

## Origin

The phrase comes from the Book of Daniel. At a feast in Babylon, King Belshazzar drinks wine from the sacred vessels his father had looted from the temple in Jerusalem, and a disembodied hand appears and writes four words on the plaster of the palace wall. None of the king's astrologers can read them. Daniel is summoned and gives the interpretation: the words — mene, mene, tekel, upharsin — mean that God has numbered the days of Belshazzar's reign, weighed him, and found him wanting; his kingdom will be handed to the Medes and Persians. That same night Babylon falls and the king is killed (Daniel 5). In English, the writing on the wall settled into its modern sense some centuries later: an unmistakable sign that disaster is coming — the warning everyone but the doomed party can already read. A struggling company is said to have seen the writing on the wall long before it folded.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.