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.
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