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''Grok'' is a
neologism A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...
coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
novel '' Stranger in a Strange Land''. While the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
'' summarizes the meaning of ''grok'' as "to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment", Heinlein's concept is far more nuanced, with critic Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. observing that "the book's major theme can be seen as an extended definition of the term." The concept of ''grok'' garnered significant critical scrutiny in the years after the book's initial publication. The term and aspects of the underlying concept have become part of communities such as
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
.


Descriptions of ''grok'' in ''Stranger in a Strange Land''

Critic David E. Wright Sr. points out that in the 1991 "uncut" edition of ''Stranger'', the word ''grok'' "was used first ''without any explicit definition'' on page 22" and continued to be used without being explicitly defined until page 253 (emphasis in original). He notes that this first intensional definition is simply "to drink", but that this is only a metaphor "much as English 'I see' often means the same as 'I understand'". Critics have bridged this absence of explicit definition by citing passages from ''Stranger'' that illustrate the term. A selection of these passages follows:


Etymology

Robert A. Heinlein originally coined the term ''grok'' in his 1961 novel '' Stranger in a Strange Land'' as a Martian word that could not be defined in Earthling terms, but can be associated with various literal meanings such as "water", "to drink", "life", or "to live", and had a much more profound figurative meaning that is hard for terrestrial culture to understand because of its assumption of a singular reality. According to the book, drinking water is a central focus on Mars, where it is scarce. Martians use the merging of their bodies with water as a simple example or symbol of how two entities can combine to create a new reality greater than the sum of its parts. The water becomes part of the drinker, and the drinker part of the water. Both ''grok'' each other. Things that once had separate realities become entangled in the same experiences, goals, history, and purpose. Within the book, the statement of
divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine< ...
immanence verbalized among the main characters, "thou art God", is logically derived from the concept inherent in the term ''grok''. Heinlein describes Martian words as "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 IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
transcription might be ).
William Tenn William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (May 9, 1920 – February 7, 2010), a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements. Biography Born to a Jewish family in London, Phillip Klass ...
suggests Heinlein in creating the word might have been influenced by Tenn's very similar concept of ''griggo'', earlier introduced in Tenn's story " Venus and the Seven Sexes" (published in 1949). In his later afterword to the story, Tenn says Heinlein considered such influence "very possible".


Adoption and modern usage


In computer programmer culture

Uses of the word in the decades after the 1960s are more concentrated in computer culture, such as a 1984 appearance in '' InfoWorld'': "There isn't any software! Only different internal states of hardware. It's all hardware! It's a shame programmers don't grok that better." The Jargon File, which describes itself as a "Hacker's Dictionary" and has been published under that name three times, puts ''grok'' in a programming context: 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 Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
software development philosophy as "one that can make your life a lot simpler once you grok the idea". The book '' Perl Best Practices'' defines ''grok'' as understanding a portion of computer code in a profound way. It goes on to suggest that to ''re-grok'' code is to reload the intricacies of that portion of code into one's memory after some time has passed and all the details of it are no longer remembered. In that sense, ''to grok'' means to load everything into memory for immediate use. It is analogous to the way a processor caches memory for short term use, but the only implication by this reference was that it was something a human (or perhaps a Martian) would do. The main web page for cURL, an open source tool and programming library, describes the function of cURL as "cURL groks URLs". The book '' Cyberia'' covers its use in this subculture extensively: The keystroke logging software used by the NSA for its remote intelligence gathering operations is named GROK. One of the most powerful parsing filters used in ElasticSearch software's logstash component is named ''grok''. A reference book by Carey Bunks on the use of the GNU Image Manipulation Program is title
Grokking the GIMP
A common tool used for cloud development is a tool called ngrok, which stands for 'network grok'. It is a tool that allows you to create a secure tunnel on your local machine along with a public URL that you can use for accessing your local webserver. This is mainly useful for local debugging


In counterculture

* Tom Wolfe, in his book '' The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'' (1968), 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..." *In his counterculture Volkswagen repair manual, ''How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot'' (1969), dropout aerospace engineer John Muir instructs prospective used VW buyers to "grok the car" before buying. *The word was used numerous times by Robert Anton Wilson in his works '' The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' and ''
Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy The ''Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy'' is a trilogy of novels by American writer Robert Anton Wilson consisting of ''The Universe Next Door'' (1979), ''The Trick Top Hat'' (1980), and ''The Homing Pigeons'' (1981), each illustrating a different int ...
''. *The term inspired actress Mayim Bialik's women's lifestyle site, '' Grok Nation''. *The long-running science program
The Groks Science Radio Show
' centers on the idea of "grokking" science. *The word was used numerous times in the American television show ''
Adventure Time ''Adventure Time'' is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and ...
''. *The word was used by Joanna Russ in the book
The Female Man ''The Female Man'' is a feminist science fiction novel by American writer Joanna Russ. It was originally written in 1970 and first published in 1975 by Bantam Books. Russ was an ardent feminist and challenged sexist views during the 1970s with her ...
. * The word was used by Tricia Sullivan in the book Dreaming in Smoke.


See also

* Anschauung – related "sense-perception" concept in
Kantian philosophy Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind ...
* *
Being-in-the-world Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, produced a large body of work that intended a profound change of direction for philosophy. Such was the depth of change that he found it necessary to introduce many neologisms, often connect ...
– a term in the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger, aimed at deconstructing the subject–object distinction * Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description – a distinction in philosophy between familiarity with a person, place, or thing and knowledge of facts * Logos – a term in Western philosophy that has been used to describe various forms of knowledge and reasoning * Phenomenology (psychology) – the study of subjective experience *


References


External links

*
SF citations for grok
gathered for the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
'' by
Jesse Sheidlower Jesse Sheidlower (born August 5, 1968) is a lexicographer, editor, author, and programmer. He is past president of the American Dialect Society, was the project editor of the Random House ''Dictionary of American Slang'', and is the author of '' ...
* * * * WikiQuote on ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' includes many uses of ''grok'' {{Heinlein (books) Hippie movement Science fiction themes Robert A. Heinlein 1961 neologisms Words originating in fiction Sources of knowledge