grok

Meaning

Verb

• To understand (something) intuitively, to know (something) without having to think intellectually.
• To fully and completely understand something in all of its details and intricacies.

Origin

• in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The word is described as being from the word for “to drink” and, figuratively, “to drink in all available aspects of reality”, “to become one with the observed” in Heinlein’s fictitious Martian language. William Tenn later asked Heinlein if it could have been inspired by the term griggo, which featured in Tenn's 1949 Venus and the Seven Sexes; Heinlein “looked startled, then thought about it for a long time (and) shrugged, (saying) ‘It's possible, very possible.’”