APAD: Know the ropes

Meaning:

To be familiar with a task.

 

Background:

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.'

 

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The 1990s' favorable wind blowing, the ships of most of my college mates already

set sail. I instead came to the west to study but more significantly, to start

learning the ropes on a quite different vessel.

 

Since then, I sometimes wondered what my course of life would be like had I

remained in the old country. Most of my mates did well and I could be rich, too.

But would I escape the diseases of affluence? Less likely.