Word.ws English Dictionary

knew the drill

knew the drill is the simple past of know the drill.

Meaning of know the drill

Verb

know the drill (third-person singular simple present knows the drill, present participle knowing the drill, simple past knew the drill, past participle known the drill)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To be acquainted with the normal process or procedure of a given activity or situation; to be familiar with how something is done.
    • By the time of my third, five months ago, I was a right bossy cow about what I wanted because I knew the drill. For reasons I shan’t bore you with, I got them to induce me at 39 weeks, at 10am, with the epidural going in first, and it was all a dream.2014 December 5, Marina Hyde, “Childbirth is as awful as it is magical, thanks to our postnatal ‘care’”, in The Guardian

Questions about knew the drill

What is knew the drill the simple past of?
Knew the drill is the simple past of know the drill.

Words near knew the drill in the dictionary

  1. knew someone from the man in the moon
  2. knew someone from the man on the moon
  3. knew someone in the biblical sense
  4. knew someone when
  5. knew the difference between one's ass and a hole in the ground
  6. knew the drill
  7. knew the score
  8. knew the shit
  9. knew what o'clock it was
  10. knew what side of one's bread is buttered
  11. knew what side of one's bread was buttered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knew the drill (page history and authors); know the drill (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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