Verb
get a handle on (third-person singular simple present gets a handle on, present participle getting a handle on, simple past got a handle on, past participle (UK) got a handle on or (US) gotten a handle on)
(informal) To build or acquire a basic level of understanding or control.
After a week of poring over the manuals, I am just beginning to get a handle on the software.
We need to get a handle on this, will you ring those fuckers. Brian Cowen
If the Iraqis fail to implement the reforms, if they fail to get a handle on the violence, there's nothing the United States can do, militarily or otherwise, that can solve those problems. They have to assume the primary responsibility to govern themselves. Leon Panetta
It was sometimes easier to read the future from the entrails of a cat than get a fix on what a judge was thinking, and Torres-Jones was particularly hard to get a handle on. Michael Nava
I never wanted to be an actor and to this day I don`t. I can`t get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do. Dick Van Dyke
It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't. Geoffrey S. Fletcher
Getting organized in the normal routines of life and finishing little projects you've started is an important first step toward realizing larger goals. If you can't get a handle on the small things, how will you ever get it together to focus on the big things? Joyce Meyer