Not always, the dragon of Aralar (who was actually the Devil) was threatening a single dude.
In Spain the tick mark isn’t frequently used (to the extreme where most people can’t even figure out what to call it when it appears in a computer program), and the X can be positive or negative, it’s not an automatic “bad”. The act of putting ticks or other marks on a list to mark checked items does have a consistent name, the mark itself doesn’t: my American coworkers were quite surprised when they saw us “tick” the same list three times against three different comparison lists: the first time, ; the second pass, / (making X); third pass, circle the X.
I spent 9 years in an international school where, when grading tests, ✓ stood for “correct” and x for “incorrect”. However, In Finnish schools, grading tests or exams is done by marking % for “correct” and ✓ for “incorrect” (actually, I think it’s more of a V for väärin or wrong, but the same shape anyway). This led to some initially very disappointed young girls when I was substituting as an English teacher at a Finnish elementary. “All wrong??? But I thought I was good at English.” “What? No… Ohhhh. Let me change that a bit.”
The phrase “Every dog has its day” exists both in English and in Arabic, but with opposite meanings. In English, it means that the subject may be losing now, but sooner or later his day will come to shine. In Arabic culture, however, dogs have a negative association - so the phrase is a curse, short for “every dog has its day* to hang*”. The subject may be on top now, but sooner or later he’ll be brought down.
In Japan too, a tick ✓ means “incorrect”, so that led to great confusion when I was marking papers at first, too. Correct is symbolized by a circle O, and in many cases when a teacher just wants to indicate that they have seen a student’s work, it’s a great big circle over the whole page. If an elementary kid has done well the teacher will embellish the circle into a flower and call it a “hana maru” which is greatly sought after as a sign of high praise. But as a kid I’d have been livid if my teacher had scribbled all over my work!!
The Spanish version of that is a cada cerdo le llega su San Martín, “every pig reaches butchering day”. Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be a popular expression with the majority of speakers of Arabic.
Not just in India too, but Buddhists generally too-my grandmother has a paper where a swastika composed of Chinese characters on the wall (as presumably) a good luck symbol.
I don’t know how (if at all) widespread this is in other cultures, but Israelis will put thumb and all 4 fingertips together, palm upwards, and very mildly shake that hand, to signify “hold on a minute.” I believe that in (at least) Italy and Spain this same gesture means “suck my d**k!” :eek:
Uh? No. At least I would never put it that strongly. It’s more like “are you shitting me?” after someone has been asking for the moon with a red ribbon, delivered by hand, or “so, what is it you’re talking about, uh?” after making the previous requestor go himself through the reasons why it’s impossible. The movement isn´t particularly mild, either.*
“Hey, Nava, I want the new manuals ready for Monday”
“OK then, does that mean I’m not preparing and running the data loads?”
“Oh no no, the data loads have absolute priority!”
Hand gesture. With both hands.
It can also be used to indicate “are we trying to make a deal, or are we just shooting the breeze?” in a business situation, for example. A perfectly normal and friendly one, not the kind where you tell the customer to go fuck the bitch who birthed him if he knows who it was.
If anyboy knows why does my kbd go to a pre1930s layout at random, I´d love to know. And no, I can´t take it out of the list of layouts. Damnit.
Cyrano de Bergerac wore a white feather (panache) as a symbol of his courage. The word has come to mean a dashing manner in English. In England, however, people accused of cowardice were given white feathers by their colleagues.