Ask HN: Does everyone know the word “grok”?

Never heard it until now - except for ngrok which I now understand isn't simply a made up word ;-)

I would use understand as "grok" is a word relegated to fans of Heinlein and sundry, and I suspect it would be less understood by those outside the USA.

If you want to reference the same "deeper understanding" idea, use "in the zone" or "flow" or similar.

Non technical (Product and Strategy person), but it is a word I know of. I only recently remembered it as I haven't heard it in a few years, after an article enlightened me that it was originally a 'hippy' term (for the same meaning).

Didn’t some company use it in an ad a couple of decades ago?

Do you grok?

grok (as I grok it) means more of a deep understanding - an alternative is also the slang to "feel" something: i.e. "I feel ya".

I didn’t even know this word existed until I started reading along in HN threads.

similar to dig, aint it?

Grok was once a term adopted from science fiction, familiar only to sci-fi fans.

Almost a century later it's just another word, primarily used in tech circles, but not that different than any other word.

It's even in the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grok

I did not know the meaning but I've seen it in the past somewhere I think. Thank you. Now we can grok each other.

Never heard of it before

I feel like it's pretty easy to guess what it means in context, so I do use it. I've been a science fiction fan a long time, so I was tickled when I heard it used in tech circles for a long time.

Related is the difference between theoretical/surface level understanding of things, aka "book learning", and the grok/instinctive/deep level of understanding that comes from actual interactive with something.

Example: I had purchased some large rare-earth magnets, and my friend told me to just drag one over this big copper nugget outside the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary arts, and my understanding of eddy currents instantly went from theoretical to practical in a heartbeat, as I felt the drag of the magnet over the very conductive object.

I remember one time an old manager tried to say it, and everyone thought he was saying 'groping'.