get the hang of

• have the hang of

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• Audio (General American):

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get the hang of (third-person singular simple present gets the hang of, present participle getting the hang of, simple past got the hang of, past participle (UK) got the hang of or (US) gotten the hang of)

1. (colloquial) To begin to understand or manage at a basic level; to learn to handle with some skill.

   Driving feels awkward when you’re new to it, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

   • 1995, Gill Van Hasselt, Childbirth: Your Choices for Managing Pain, Taylor Pub, →ISBN:

     We got the hang of [caring for a baby], Kate and I, with some quiet, surprising guidance from a gentle male nurse whose touching lack of intrusion was so instinctive as to seem part of the pattern.

   • 2002, Shelby Lewis, Simply Marvelous, page 83:

     He felt like he was playing a new board game and was just getting the hang of the rules.

   • 2008, Fabian Black, The Stationmaster's House, →ISBN, page 83:

     I'd hardly used them either, do you know what I mean; I was just getting the hang of them when the Lord and Master decided they had to come off. There was no consultation, no let's sit down and chat about the pros and cons, just woof, off with his bollocks.

   • 2013, Arthur Vincie, Preparing for Takeoff: Preproduction for the Independent Filmmaker:

     The shotlist should be short — if you find yourself typing up more than one page per scene, you're not really getting the hang of it. Use common terminology whenever possible. From the shotlist, the DP can figure out, to some extent, how many lighting changes each scene will require.

   • 2018 March, Okina Baba, translated by Jenny McKeon, So I’m a Spider, So What?, volume 2, New York, N.Y.: Yen Press, →ISBN, back cover:

     But just when I thought I’d gotten the hang of things, a snake chased me into a deeper level of the labyrinth! Everything’s on hard mode down here.