This is from a manifest I just processed.
PIECES: 20
WEIGHT: 42000
COMMODITY: CANNED TUNA
Edit: Of the three people who have weighed in on the meaning of "grok," no one of them is fully right. There is an interesting amount of variation in the degree of wrongness, however.
Personally, I go by the definition of the creator, and I'm bummed that I haven't got the text on hand, or I would quote it.
PIECES: 20
WEIGHT: 42000
COMMODITY: CANNED TUNA
Edit: Of the three people who have weighed in on the meaning of "grok," no one of them is fully right. There is an interesting amount of variation in the degree of wrongness, however.
Personally, I go by the definition of the creator, and I'm bummed that I haven't got the text on hand, or I would quote it.
correction
OED: a. trans. (also with obj. clause) To understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with. b. intr. To empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment.
1961 R. HEINLEIN Stranger in Strange Land iii. 18 Smith had been aware of the doctors but had grokked that their intentions were benign. Ibid. xxiv. 250 Now that he knew himself to be self he was free to grok ever closer to his brothers. 1968 T. WOLFE Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vi. 86 Instead they are all rapping and grokking over the sound it made..as if they had synched into a never-before-heard thing, a unique thing. 1968 Playboy June 80 He met her at an acid-rock ball and she grokked him, this ultracool miss loaded with experience and bereft of emotion. 1969 New Yorker 15 Mar. 35, I was thinking we ought to get together somewhere, Mr. Zzyzbyzynsky, and grok about our problems. 1975 D. LODGE Changing Places iv. 137 Nestling earth couple would like to find water brothers to grock with in peace. 1984 InfoWorld 21 May 32 There isn't any software! Only different internal states of hardware. It's all hardware! It's a shame programmers don't grok that better.
Re: correction
I hate to argue with the OED, but their definition for "grok" is more-or-less entirely incorrect. I'd go with the Jargon File on this one:(From http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/grok.html)
Re: correction
I don't have a copy of the text -- do you? I need someone to show me where exactly Heinlein glosses it in the book. :) In the OED snippet of the text, it does not make sense that Smith would "drink" in the intentions of the doctors... :P
Re: correction
His def isn't complete, either.
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You cannot POSSIBLY imagined that I would not know the literal meaning of 'grok.'
Memory to the side, if you grokked 'grok', you would never have corrected me.
Also, I forgot to note, the quote is from the 1987 Ace paperback edition, pages 213-214.
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"Take this word: 'grok.' Its literal meaning, one which I suspect goes back to the origin of the Martian race as thinking creatures - and which throws light on their whole 'map' - is easy. 'Grok' means 'to drink.'"
"Huh?" said Jubal. "Mike never says 'grok' when he's just talking about drinking. He - "
"Just a moment." Mahmoud spoke to Mike in Martian.
Mike looked faintly surprised. "'Grok' is drink."
"But Mike would have agreed," Mahmoud went on, "if I had named a hundred other English words, words which we think of as different concepts, even antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear', it means 'love', it means 'hate' - proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you - then can you hate. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate - and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste."
Mahmoud screwed up his face. "'Grok' means "identically equal.' The human cliche, 'This hurts me more than it hurts you," has a Martian flavor. The Martians seem to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer interacts with observed through the process of observation. '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 as color means to a blind man." Mahmoud paused. "Jubal, if I chopped you up and made a stew, you and the stew, whatever was in it, would grok - and when I ate you, we would grok together and nothing would be lost and it would not matter which one of us did the eating."
"It would to me!" Jubal said firmly.
"You aren't a Martian." Mahmoud stopped to talk to Mike in Martian.
Mike nodded. "You spoke rightly, my brother, Dr. Mahmoud. I am been saying so. Thou art God."
Mahmoud shrugged helplessly. "You see how hopeless it is? All I got was a blasphemy. We don't think in Martian. We can't."
"Thou art God," Mike said agreeably. "God groks."
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In the meantime, regardless of how we gloss the word, no one knows what to do with all that tuna. ;)
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And you are wrong on this point -- for TUNA, Fox would beat up both The Boy and Totoro and eat every mouthful very quickly... so she could puke it up on the carpet half an hour later. ;)
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Your definition is just as incomplete as mine. :>
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When you come back in October, I look forward to watching you imbibe a person encased in heavy bondage gear.
In fact, I think that may be be the highlight of my year.
And yes, that was how I felt at the time.