It doesn't mean "straighten me up" either |
After seeing RAPPEL for the thousandth time, I finally looked it up. It means "reminder" or "recall." Aha! Appeler means to call (as in Je m'appelle Brian, "I call myself Brian"), so rappel is literally "re-call." How elegant. And it brings us to an interesting point. In France, one of the responsibilities of a driver is to know, by heart, a table of the standard speed limits on various types of roads. That means, in turn, that a driver has no excuse for not knowing what the speed limit on a given road is. The word RAPPEL on a sign means "You should already know this; this sign does not indicate a departure from the previous regime." How admirably tough-minded.
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