To be familiar with a task.
Up until the 20th Century sailing ships had vast numbers of ropes and a crewman would not be effective unless he 'knew all the ropes'.
The first known appearance in print is in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before The Mast in 1840, in which he wrote 'the captain, who ....knew the ropes, took the steering oar.'
More expressions and their source
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A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.
Erased
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In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.
Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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