Talk:groak
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Can anyone an instance of actual use of this word? (not just in lists of words, etc) DGRJI 04:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
- Zero, it seems to only appear in online dictionaries, which makes me think it's a joke. --Mglovesfun (talk) 20:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
- I see someone found a usage, but Google Scholar also gets zero for this. 702 hits, all of them refer to people called Groak or Groák. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:27, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
- If even the God Google doesn't know this word... It clearly is a joke, in my opinion. --Actarus (Prince d'Euphor) 09:59, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
- I see someone found a usage, but Google Scholar also gets zero for this. 702 hits, all of them refer to people called Groak or Groák. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:27, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
- Well, WordNet is more than your average online dictionary; on the other hand, the entry seems to not be very well proofread, so who knows. There is another cite besides the one I added, but it is partially hidden by snippet view: "Stop groaking at me with your goo-goo […] " [1]. The next word in the sentence is apparently not "eyes", nor anything else I can readily think of. Likewise, the word itself is obscured here, but it seems unlikely to be a scanno: " […] fused into the sea, and the fish groaked at the window like curious hungry urchins." [2] That would make three bona-fide uses, if these could be satisfactorily verified. -- Visviva 10:30, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
- Books and Scholar also get nothing for groaks, groaked and groaking. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:26, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
- Well, WordNet is more than your average online dictionary; on the other hand, the entry seems to not be very well proofread, so who knows. There is another cite besides the one I added, but it is partially hidden by snippet view: "Stop groaking at me with your goo-goo […] " [1]. The next word in the sentence is apparently not "eyes", nor anything else I can readily think of. Likewise, the word itself is obscured here, but it seems unlikely to be a scanno: " […] fused into the sea, and the fish groaked at the window like curious hungry urchins." [2] That would make three bona-fide uses, if these could be satisfactorily verified. -- Visviva 10:30, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
RFV failed, entry moved redirectlessly to Citations:groak. BTW, Visviva, b.g.c. claims the next word you're looking for is "googeldies" (see google books:"stop groaking at me with your goo-goo *"), though I admit to being a bit suspicious of that claim. —RuakhTALK 06:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I found the word a hardcopy of the book "The English dialect dictionary
being the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years founded on the publications of the English dialect society and on a large amount of material never before printed." Ed. by Joseph Wright. The volume 2, which contains the letter G is luckily available online: http://www.archive.org/stream/englishdialectdi02wrig#page/734/mode/2up. Also "A Scot’s dialect dictionary : comprising the words in use from the latter part of the seventeenth century to the present day / comp. by Alexander Warrack ... with an introduction and a dialect map by William Grant" (available online: hhttp://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924026538813#page/n257/mode/2up) lists the word. However, I am not familiar with the procedures of wiktionary, but the provided sources should be enough to make a word page out of this. --78.33.160.225 02:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Modern use of the word "groak" began with the publication of Robert Heinlein's novel, "Stranger in a Strange Land," in which the title character, Michael Valentine Smith, a human reared by Martians and then returned to Earth, uses the word to express his understanding of a concept. At one point he says, "I groak God," upon first being introduced to lovemaking. I don't know if there is an older etymology for this word, but the links above for the English Dialect Dictionary do not work.
- That's grok, without the "a" Chuck Entz (talk) 04:43, 26 February 2014 (UTC)