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Grok (IPA , rhymes with rock) is a verb that connotes knowledge greater than that which can be sensed by an outside observer. It is an understanding beyond empathy and intimacy. In grokking, one experiences the literal capabilities and frame of reference of the subject.
Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term as part of a fictional Martian language in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it literally means "drink" and figuratively refers to the merging of essence that encompasses the theme of the book. The term has become part of the English language, attested in dictionaries and used most by certain counterculture groups and in hacker culture.
Pronunciation and part of speech
According to the book, Martian words are "guttural" and "jarring." Martian speech is described as sounding "like a bullfrog fighting a cat." Accordingly, grok is generally pronounced as a guttural "gr" terminated by a sharp "k" with very little or no vowel sound (a narrow IPA transcription might be ).
Both transitive and intransitive uses exist, but the latter is rare. Other forms of the word include "groks" (present third person singular), "grokked" (past participle) and "grokking" (present participle).
In Stranger in a Strange Land
The primary character of the book never tries to verbalize a full definition of grok, but demonstrates various instances and effects throughout the novel. A secondary, human character in the book defines the term as:
- Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.
In counterculture
Tom Wolfe, in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, describes a character's thoughts during an acid trip: "He looks down, two bare legs, a torso rising up at him and like he is just noticing them for the first time... he has never seen any of this flesh before, this stranger. He groks over that...." Hippie guru Ram Dass wrote, in Be Here Now, quotes a large passage from Stranger about the word.
In science fiction
A popular t-shirt and bumper sticker slogan for Trekkies, seen as early as 1968, was I grok Spock (often showing the Star Trek character using the Vulcan salute). Other science fiction authors have borrowed the term over the years as an homage.
In hacker culture
The Jargon File, which describes itself as a "Hacker's Dictionary," puts grok in a programming context:
- When you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you “know” LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say you “grok” LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, which is similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash.
The entry existed in the very earliest forms of the Jargon File, dating from the early 1980s. A typical tech usage from the Linux Bible, 2005 characterizes the Unix software development philosophy as "one that can make your life lot simpler once you grok the idea".
Mainstream usage
In their book The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe write of 1996 Presidential candidate Bob Dole as "not a person who could grok values in the now-dominant Boomer tongue".
See also
- Church of All Worlds
- Groklaw, a blawg
- Grokster, a defunct p2p service
- Grokker, a search engine
- Grok Magazine, an Australian student magazine
- Gestalt psychology
- Anschauung, a related "sense-perception" concept in Kantian philosophy
External links
- Grok definition in the Jargon File
- Grok definition in the American Heritage Dictionary
- SF citations for grok gathered for the Oxford English Dictionary by Jesse Sheidlower
- WikiQuote on Stranger in a Strange Land includes many uses of grok
- Grok and the Vanguard of Science, essay from Berkeley Groks science radio program
"Grok"