know the ropes

present singular third person knows the ropes · participle present knowing the ropes · past knew the ropes · participle past known the ropes

1. To have experience of the appropriate procedures; know how a particular task or job should be done (with reference to ropes used in sailing).

   1 more example

   A traveller from Pontypridd to Llantrisant, not knowing the ropes, would naturally travel to the station of that name, only to find himself at Pont-y-Clun, two miles distant, and probably would not be at all soothed to discover that, had he alighted at the previous station (known as Cross Inn), he would have been within half a mile of his objective. [the station at Pontyclun was named Llantrisant before it closed, it later reopened as Pontyclun]

   1951 March, M. D. Greville, “The Nomenclature of Railway Stations”, in Railway Magazine, page 194