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PlainSpell

grok

/ˈɡɹɑk/verb

grok is a verb meaning “To understand (something) intuitively, to know (something) without having to think intellectually” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-R-O-K, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does grok mean?

verb

  1. 1

    slangTo understand (something) intuitively, to know (something) without having to think intellectually.

  2. 2

    slangTo fully and completely understand something in all of its details and intricacies.

    I finally grok Perl.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce grok?

  • UK /ˈɡɹɒk/
  • US /ˈɡɹɑk/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-grok.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of grok

  • groks present, singular, he/she/it
  • grokking participle, present
  • groking participle, present
  • grokked participle, past
  • groked participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is grok?

Grok appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 109,062nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Grok in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpiger, capter, gnoquer (to have an intuitive understanding)
Germanschnallen, kapieren, raffen (to have an intuitive understanding), begreifen, verstehen (to fully understand)
Spanishentender (to have an intuitive understanding), pilotar (to fully understand)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does grok come from?

Coined ex nihilo by American author and engineer Robert A. Heinlein in 1961 in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein invented the word for his fictitious Martian language. It is described as meaning "to drink" and, figuratively, "to drink in all available aspects of reality", "to become one with the observed". William Tenn asked Heinlein if it could have been inspired by the term griggo, which featured in Tenn's "Venus and the Seven Sexes" (1949); Heinlein "looked startled, then thought about it for a long time (and) shrugged, (saying) 'It's possible, very possible.'"

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).