Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Up to the mark; fully skilled or accomplished; expert; possessing or showing the readiness or skill of an adept: followed by at or in: as, he is quite au fait at the game.
Wiktionary
- adj. Being familiar with or informed about something.
GNU Webster's 1913
- Expert; skillful; well instructed.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. being up to particular standard or level especially in being up to date in knowledge
Examples
“Quoique le sauvage du nouveau monde soit à-peu-près de même stature que l'homme de notre monde, cela ne suffit pas pour qu'il puisse faire une exception au fait général du repetissement de la nature vivante dans tout ce continent: le sauvage est foible & petit par les organes de la génération; il n'a ni poil, ni barbe, & nulle ardeur pour sa femelle; quoique plus léger que l'Européen parce qu'il a plus d'habitude à courir, il est cependant beaucoup moins fort de corps; il est aussi bien moins sensible, & cependant plus craintif & plus lâche; il n'a nulle vivacité, nulle activité dans l'ame; celle du corps est moins un exercice, un mouvement volontaire qu'une nécessité d'action causée par le besoin; otez lui la faim & la foif, vous détruirez en meme temps le principe actif de tous ses mouvemens; il demeurera stupidement en repos sur ses jambes ou couché pendant des jours entiers.”
“I was only curious because I didn't know you were a "leet haxor", but I suppose if you were able to cook up that email programme, you must be pretty au fait with these things. ”
“leet haxor", but I suppose if you were able to cook up that email programme, you must be pretty au fait with these things. ”
Boiling a Frog
“He had not the placid, quiet, unworldly air of Simeon Halliday; on the contrary, a particularly wide-awake and au fait appearance, like a man who rather prides himself on knowing what he is about, and keeping a bright look-out ahead; peculiarities which sorted rather oddly with his broad brim and formal phraseology.”
“He could gobble like a turkey so perfectly as to deceive the most experienced old gobbler on the farm; he could crow so like a cock that all the cocks in the neighborhood would reply to him; he could mew like a cat, and bark like a dog; he could sing and fiddle, and dance the double-shuffle, and was au fait in all manner of jigs and hornpipes; and one need not wonder, therefore, that old Cæsar was hugged and caressed and lauded by me in my childhood as the most wonderful of men.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘au fait’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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select words
luminous, radiant, malicious, zeal, ojalá, voluptuary, rubbish, purlicue, consarnit, upstart, precis, robinsonade and 66 more...
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touch
palp, tactile, brush, abut, bepaint, tinct, soupcon, graze, stroke, allude, nudge, epicritic and 67 more...
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Kathy C's List
My favorite words
golconda, au fait, purlicue, tautonym, cunctatory, gynecomastia, vesta, imprimatur, efflux, antediluvian, protean, phlegmatic and 24 more...

fbharjo in the sense of being 'in touch' Oct 22, 2010
yarb ...I do not doubt, Fats,
that you are au fait
with recent work by
Rescher and Brandom
on Realism...
- Peter Reading, 5x5x5x5x5, 1983 Jul 1, 2008