Grok

Grok is a word coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. In the novel, the word is defined as follows: "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 of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man."

From the physical point of view, the mutual grokking of two ensembles of matter waves is their mutual constructive interference, also known as quantum entanglement: Those who are grokking are momentarily vibrating on the same frequency and wavelength.
 * —Koss, Ron; Koss, Arnie ♦ The Earth's Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010, p. 8

The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathise or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment". Other forms of the word include groks (present third person singular), grokked (past participle) and grokking (present participle).

In an ideological context, a grokked concept becomes part of the person who contributes to its evolution by improving the doctrine, perpetuating the myth, espousing the belief, adding detail to the social plan, refining the idea or proving the theory.

Stranger in a Strange Land
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 is a central focus on Mars, where water 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 immanence verbalized between 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 transcription might be ).

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:

"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 a similar supernatural 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 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 that a human (or maybe 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.

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.

Ed Sanders' book The Family (2002) erroneously states that convicted murderer Charles Manson was a fan of Heinlein and Stranger and adopted many of the terms associated with both including grok and thou art God. This was later proven untrue in interviews with Manson himself as he had never heard of the book. Some of his followers had heard of it and read it but Manson never used the book to justify the murders or any of his other activities.

In film

 * In the movie Into the Wild Green Yonder, a feature length special of the TV show Futurama, the character Nine states, "So dig this, Fry. Our commune's been monitoring the Universe's life energy for, like, a really long time, and we're grokking some super-weird junk." To which Fry responds, "Um, I don't mean to be rude, but it's kinda hard to take you seriously when you say junk like grok and junk."

In literature

 * In the book The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), author Michael Pollan critiques a farm raising organic chickens with unused doors to pastures, writing, "Rosie the organic free range chicken doesn't really grok the whole free-range concept."


 * 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".


 * In the The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

In music

 * A lyric of the song "Friends", by The Police, states the singer will "grok your essence".

In radio

 * The Groks Science Show is a science radio program that uses the term in the name of their program.

In products and brands

 * The data analytics company Numenta adopted the name Grok for their pattern prediction product.

In television

 * In the Adventure Time episode, "In Your Footsteps", Jake says, "He's trying to steal your identity. Why can't you grok that?"


 * In the Mad Men season six premier, "The Doorway" (2013), the term "grok" is used in the first episode by one of the young squatters, who tells Betty Francis (formerly Betty Draper) to get lost.

In science fiction
A popular t-shirt and bumper sticker slogan for Trekkies, seen as early as 1967, was I grok Spock (often showing the Star Trek character using the Vulcan salute).

Other science fiction authors, such as David Brin or Greg Cox, have borrowed the term over the years as an homage.

In Daniel X: Watch the Skies, the main character, Daniel, uses the term several times over the course of the book.


 * In an episode of Night Court, Judge Harry Stone asks what grok is. Bailiff Bull Shannon responds that it is "[a] sudden flash of insight derived from a profound empathetic experience."

In the science fiction role playing game Eclipse Phase, Grok is one of several abilities that may be used by someone infected by the Watts-Macleod strain of the Exsurgent virus. This power allows them to intuitively understand how any unfamiliar object, vehicle, or device is used simply by looking at and handling it.
 * In an episode of the live action series based on the comic The Tick, in response to an explanation from Arthur, the Tick responds, "I grok your mouth music mandingo.