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Pretentious.

Juvenile.

Useful.

Neat.

Perfectly cromulent.

[Nabubrush]

Man, somebody just used this word on me (in a way). It's been a while since I heard it, but it just always struck me like . . . I don't know, like don't we have enough words in our language? And doesn't it just mean 'get' or 'understand'? Does anyone here use it? Don't be embarassed to answer; I mean, I'm an idiot. What does my opinion count for?

[littlefallsmets]

I've used "grok" in conversation before but not often.

Pretty much, man, I think it means more than "get" or "understand"... there's a level of affection to it, more than just knowing, there's something like love involved as well.

Female Star Trek fans would wear shirts that said "I Grok Spock".

This is the level on which I understand "grok".

[Lister]

It's a Heinlein-ism.  It basically means to comprehend fully.

In other words, when one of us uses it, the phrase "I can't grok it" means "I do not fully understand it, but I read Heinlein so I'm obviously pretty smart."

[mavies]

I used it once or twice after I read the book, then stopped when I realised no one else was grokking it at all. It's a pretty nifty word in a way, I guess it kind of encapsulates (another nifty word!) all different kinds of understanding.

[Doc]

I never used it but I like it in that it means complete understanding, much deeper than the superficial 'get'.

[Nabubrush]

Yeah, I understand what it's supposed to mean, and where it comes from. I'll be pretentious and let y'all know I read it when I was 13. I'm just saying that if the language needed 'grok', it wouldn't have waited till the 60s to come up with it. I mean, I find that 'understand' or 'get' conveys everything I need to say most of the time, and the rest of the time I can modify with 'really'.

[wombat]

I was listening to an interview from the NPR show Fresh Air the other day and one of the two guys she was interviewing used it, and the other one teased him mercilessly.  He insisted it was a cool word because Steve Jobs used it.

Damn, I'll bet this story would make a lot more sense if I could remember who it was... hmm, I think it was two guys who made the movie Ratatouille.

[Nabubrush]

For background, I had a friend who used this word a lot, and I had to drop him. Knew him for 30 years, too. It's just that in order to use it, he had to fuck*ng shoehorn it into a sentence. It's just so jarring.

[side_show]

I used it in conversation once, then said "did I just say grok?  What does that even mean?"  The other person didn't know.  Also, as applied above, I was using it totally wrong - I was using it to refer to the gross gunk and schlock that washing up on the river bank in the city.  I was using it as a conjunction of those words.  I think I said "all that grok and sludge."

[Arachno-capitalist]

For background, I had a friend who used this word a lot, and I had to drop him. Knew him for 30 years, too. It's just that in order to use it, he had to fuck*ng shoehorn it into a sentence. It's just so jarring.

Did you know that nabu once interrupted coitus completely because the woman made a grok sound? He burned her village of orphans and used the ashes in a lubricant jelly.

[Nabubrush]

Did you know that nabu once interrupted coitus completely because the woman made a grok sound? He burned her village of orphans and used the ashes in a lubricant jelly.

I was tough but fair. It had to be done. It was necessary to burn the village in order to save it.

[lprkn]

...I'm just saying that if the language needed 'grok', it wouldn't have waited till the 60s to come up with it.

I'm pretty sure "unibrow" didn't show up until the 90's, and it is completely indispensable.

(But don't say grok, that's lame.)

[gloomba]

I'm with Nabu.  It's unnecessary and irritating and is basically only used to call attention to how cool/smart/worldly the person is for having read Heinlein, in social circles where that's the sort of thing that's considered cool.  I know some people who say it, and I always have to suppress the urge to roll my eyes or to vomit.

[theinevitable]

i would like to think that I am at an age/of a generation that... I am the only person who has read that book.

[jay-ell]

I have heard it, and think it's kind of lame. 

I agree with Nabu that we already have words that do this.  Memo to Science Fiction Authors: Do Not Make Up Slang. 

Then again, William Gibson invented all kinds of words for things that didn't exist at the time, but that we now use in everyday life.  Words like...cyberspace.  But I don't think prescription drug abuse will ever be called "doing hexagons."  So I guess you win some, you lose some in that arena.