Home US English at one's mother's knee

Definition of at one's mother's knee in English:

at one's mother's knee

phrase

(also at one's father's knee)

  • At an early age.

    ‘The shop was staffed initially by her five children, who all learned the business and a service mentality at their mother's knee.’
    • ‘I remember listening to his distinctive, gravelly voice as a child at my father's knee.’
    • ‘But Alessi did not learn his trade at his mother's knee in Malta (although he fondly remembers the fabulous Maltese speciality, cheesecake-like pies called pastizzi).’
    • ‘Grant's heroine, Alix Rebick, is the inheritor of a Dresden cosmetics fortune who has spent years at her mother's knee, learning the complicated feminine rituals of beautification.’
    • ‘The ethics we practice are those that we learned at our mother's knee, so we think they are good.’
    • ‘He learned his politics at his mother's knee.’
    • ‘Born in 1886 and groomed to lead the enterprise, Archie Bray had learned brickmaking at his father's knee, there absorbing the nineteenth-century practices of molding and ‘burning’ brick.’
    • ‘Oliver, who is 27, learnt to cook at his father's knee - his parents ran a pub - and he wanted to be a chef from an early age.’
    • ‘His love and knowledge of wine started literally at his father's knee.’
    • ‘When I was being taught the basic values at my mother's knee I got some valuable lessons.’