Since your reply is so polite I will treat it at face value and apologise for going off on one at you.
I accept that there are many dialects and variations, but 'English' is usually taken to mean the Queen's language as detailed by the OED. For something else it would be explicit: American English as detailed by Miriam Webster, for instance, except where some basic element is common. The particular phrase I used probably wouldn't be known away from England, though.
FWIW, your claim that “English = British English if not otherwise specified” is something I’ve heard countless British people say, but the remaining English-speaking world disagrees, as does the field of linguistics (which was my minor in university). Basically, when discussing a language with multiple major dialects, e.g. English or Spanish, then when you say [language name] without any qualifier, you mean generally for that language, regardless of dialect — the common basis, if you will. So for example, it’s totally correct to say “in English, the word for ‘3’ is ‘three’”, because it applies fully to all major dialects. In contrast, it woulldn’t really be correct to say “in English, the word for the storage compartment is called the boot”, because that’s not universally true.
Obviously, there’s no clear delineation for all situations, insofar as the existence of exceptions in minor dialects don’t violate the rules as such. (A linguist being precise might say, for example, that “in standard English, the plural of ‘you’ is ‘you’”, acknowledging that “y’all”, “youse”, “you’uns”, etc exist in various regional dialects, but aren’t considered officially correct.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, it’s best to say which dialect of English you mean, because depending on who you ask, “English” alone won’t necessarily be understood as what you think it means.
What does this one mean, exactly, then?
Amazingly, wiktionary gives as good an explanation as I could:
Midland exclamation at an unexpectedly good outcome of a bad situation
In this thread, I was noting that despite Heck's apparently atrocious soldering skills, the end result (a working board) was achieved.
Thanks for the explanation! I
definitely don’t know most British regionalisms!
Indeed, it’s kinda miraculous that any of Heck’s soldered builds work. I have to imagine that many components suffer subtle damage that may affect their performance or longevity, despite working initially.