grok
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English [edit]
Etymology [edit]
Coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) in which the word is described as being from the word for “to drink” and, figuratively, “to drink in all available aspects of reality”, “to become one with the observed” in Heinlein’s fictitious Martian language.
Pronunciation [edit]
Verb [edit]
grok (third-person singular simple present groks, present participle grokking, simple past and past participle grokked)
- (transitive, slang) To have or to have acquired an intuitive understanding of; to know (something) without having to think (such as knowing the number of objects in a collection without needing to count them: see subitize).
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- 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 107:
- I do not grok all fullness of what I read. In the history written by Master William Shakespeare I found myself full of happiness at the death of Romeo. Then I read on and learned that he had discorporated too soon – or so I thought I grokked. Why?
- 2008 Dec, Leslie Anthony, “Running from Babylon”, Skiing, volume 61, number 4, page 116:
- He freely plucks notions and verbiage from science fiction to describe everything from mountain-related undertakings to political subterfuge – like "grok", a term from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, to denote intuitive understanding.
- 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, page 107:
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- (transitive, slang) To fully and completely understand something in all its details and intricacies.
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- He groks Perl.
- I find it exceedingly doubtful that any person groks quantum mechanics.
- 2008 August, Stanley Bing, “New Help for Hodads”, Fortune, volume 158, number 3, page 152:
- Today we take a few moments to help you grok some of the ways that victims of TU can up their hipness – if we may use that term without being considered old school.
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Usage notes [edit]
- Grok is used mainly by the geek subculture, though it was heavily used by the counterculture of the 1960s, as evidenced by its repeated appearance in Tom Wolfe's “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
Translations [edit]
to have an intuitive understanding
to fully understand
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked
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See also [edit]
Grok on Wikipedia.Wikipedia- Heinlein Society
