tricks of the trade

1. Clever ways of operating a business or performing a task or activity, especially slightly dishonest or unfair ones. For example, Alma knows all the tricks of the trade, cutting the fabric as close as possible, or The butcher weighs meat after it's wrapped; charging for the packaging is one of the tricks of the trade.

Example Sentences

As a therapist herself, working in the same shared office space as her own analyst, Linda knows all of the tricks of the trade and also what defines a good and bad practitioner.

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That’s just enough wiggle room for sound engineers, who can try tricks of the trade to make commercials feel punchier and be perceived as louder while staying within the rules, Liaukonyte said.

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All these tricks of the trade would be incorporated in a tale of an attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, The Day of the Jackal, which he pounded out in his bedsit on an old typewriter in just 35 days.

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He will perform at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival in May, and said there are "tricks of the trade" including certian "jokes and comebacks" that experienced comedians can lean on to deal with such situations.

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Despite Quentin’s request for his father to coach him in youth sports — “I wanted to learn all the tricks of the trade,” he said — Carnell declined.

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