Word.ws English Dictionary

get the hang of

get the hang of verb: to begin to understand or manage at a basic level; to learn to handle with some skill.

Verb

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

Forms of get the hang of

third-person singular presentgets the hang of
present participlegetting the hang of
pastgot the hang of
past participle UKgot the hang of
past participle USgotten the hang of
alternative formhave the hang of

Questions about get the hang of

What does get the hang of mean?
Get the hang of means to begin to understand or manage at a basic level; to learn to handle with some skill.
What part of speech is get the hang of?
Get the hang of is a verb.
What is the past tense of get the hang of?
The past tense of get the hang of is got the hang of.

Words near get the hang of in the dictionary

  1. get the drift
  2. get the drop on
  3. get the elbow
  4. get the flak
  5. get the goods on
  6. get the hang of
  7. get the hint
  8. get the idea
  9. get the job done
  10. get the last laugh
  11. get the lead out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get the hang of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-get the hang of.wav.

Cite this entry: “get the hang of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_the_hang_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.