grok

Etymology

Coined by American author and aeronautical 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 later 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.’”