Have you read Stranger in a Strange Land? I suspect someone else has taught you that word and they did it badly. To grok is to understand something at a profound, visceral level.
"Grok" in is original use is something more like a deep and complete understanding. Here is Heinlein's explanation from "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 Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man."
But 'grok' is supposed to mean something more like understand various arbitrary things at a low and intimate level, not at a high level.
In Stranger in a Strange Land grok was the Martian word for "water".
But water was so tied up to everything in their culture that what it really meant was virtually anything. In particular it meant to really "get" what something meant, or what someone else was saying.
The informal verb grok was an invention of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land placed great importance on the concept of grokking. In the book, to grok is to empathize so deeply with others that you merge or blend with them.
“Grok” was Valentine Michael Smith’s rendering for human ears and vocal cords of a Martian word with a precise denotational semantic of “to drink”. The connotational semantics range from to literally or figuratively “drink deeply” all the way up through to consume the absented carcass of a cherished one.
I highly recommend Stranger in A Strange Land (and make sure to get the unabridged re-issue, 1990 IIRC).
“Grok” is from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. It was a super important word to me as a kid. I’ve recently started hearing it again used by people who never read the book and find it interesting.
Do you remember where you first heard this word? I assume you heard it as it’s such a memorable word and difficult to misspell.
I think the downvotes are because people expected you to know Grok is a software LLM where Groq is a hardware scheme on which to run LLMs, or that Groq came out about 7 years before Grok so the "homage" is the reverse, i.e. Elon possibly paying to Groq. Groq was chosen as homage to Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" which invented the word "Grok" to mean "to understand deeply and intuitively" but also eating a dead loved one ("Resident Alien" on Netflix did that this year). Elon just used the English word directly like "Windows" and "Apple". Not using the word directly like "Groq" makes internet searches easier for everyone.
BTW Heinlein described prompt engineering of an LLM perfectly throughout the opening chapter of his * 1966 * book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". The "engineer" even admits he had no hard-core "engineering" training because capitalizing on the new technology didn't need it. The chapter could have been written today.
Just finishing up Stranger in a strange land and I'm so surprised to see 'grok' on this context. I don't think I've ever seen the word before in my life. Pretty awesome.
Grok is a term from Robert A. Heinlein's book "Stranger in a strange land."
I can see why finding out that these amazing words are not 'official' English could make you sad, but for me I find it amazing and encouraging, as this is exactly the way that some language is formed! They are so full of future potential.
I look forward to seeing what terms 'make it' into major dictionaries in the future.
reply