This is a true story, I swear:

I was in art school many years ago, doing a sculpture workshop, and was discussing the current project with the student next to me, who was a friend of mine outside of class. I had just read Stranger for the first time shortly before, and in response to someting he said I answered something like, "I grok what you're saying."

"Grok? What's that mean?" he asked.

"Grok? Stranger in a Strange Land? One of the seminal books of the Sixties?" Yes, I really did talk like that back then. "Come on, everyone knows what grok means! I bet if I asked anyone else here what grok means, they'd know!"

"I very much doubt that," he answered, growing understandably impatient.

So I turned to the student sitting on the other side of me, a complete stranger, and said "Excuse me, what does grok mean?" Without missing a beat, she immediately said "Knowing something by such total immersion that the boundary between yourself and the thing being known is erased and you are effectively one with that thing."

I didn't even do a double take. I just turned back to my friend and said, "See?" The look on his face was priceless.

(Later, I struck up further conversation with the other student, and it turned out she'd never actually read Stranger herself, but the guy she was seeing had, and he'd explained the concept to her at great length...)

To Grok is Good!

I used this term once and a coworker of mine claimed to have INTENTED the word.
Said she, "Yeah, it's like, when you're mad about something and you start to go 'grrr....' but then you just accept it, and you decide it's really ok. Like, 'grrr....ok.'"

I managed to not throw up on her.
p.s. -I'm new to this tribe, hi.