What is a grok?

Question

Please can anyone answer what is a grok? and who made up the word?

Answer 1

Taken from the book 'Stranger in a Strange Land,' literally meaning 'to drink' but taken to mean 'understanding.' Often used by programmers and other assorted geeks.

Answer 2

It's an actual word.

grok

1. to understand thoroughly and intuitively

2. to communicate sympathetically

Answer 3

To grok (pronounced /ˈgrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. In Heinlein's view of quantum theory, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed.

As first used in the Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land:

“ 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 Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man. ”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize 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 proofing the theory.