Gronk the Data

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Chris Elman. How are you doing today?

Hi, Chris. Where are you calling from?

Calling from San Diego, California.

Welcome to the program, Chris.

Well, I had a question about one of the words that my boss would use.

The word is dronk.

And the context of it is we work in the medical device industry and I work in a sales operations function.

A lot of times we’ve got to go through a lot of data to determine zip code boundaries for territory alignments or commission structures or quotas.

Often when we’re talking about these large data sources and kind of crunching the data, he uses the word gronking the data.

And so I guess my question for you is, he wasn’t sure that really the origins of this word or where it came from, and wanted to see if maybe you guys could help me understand it a little bit better.

Gronk. Chris, did he spell it for you?

It’s never been spelt, but my assumption of the way it’s spelled is G-R-O-N-K.

Gronk.

What’s he like? What’s his age?

I would say that he’s somewhere probably between 50 and 60.

Does he come from an old school tech background or anything like that?

Very possibly.

He said he originally came from J&J.

Johnson & Johnson?

Yeah, so I think that he said that’s where he first heard the word and kind of picked it up.

The reason I ask is I’ve never heard it used that way.

Usually it’s grok, G-R-O-K, without an N in there.

That means you grok the data, means you understand the data.

It’s exactly the same use that you’re talking about, but without the N.

Now, there is an old-school Internet term, gronk or gronk out, which means to finish or to kill or to break.

Like you might gronk out a machine by overloading it, or you might gronk out, and they mean clock out or go home, and you’re just done, right?

A lot of different uses for that.

But gronk, as we know, it is a very well-established term in the tech fields.

It’s in Eric S. Raymond’s Jargon File.

It’s in all of the computer slang dictionaries.

I know it from the tech business when I was doing that for a living.

It comes from Heinlein’s novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1961.

It’s a little bit different than he used it there, but everyone acknowledges that he’s the one that coined it.

So you grok data rather than gronk it.

Now, it’s interesting.

He may have just heard it wrong, but I think he’s alone.

Everyone else I know says grok.

Huh, so it’s G-R-A-K.

No, O-K, G-R-O-K.

Okay, interesting.

You said that was, who coined it again, Hyman?

Heinlein, H-E-I-N-L-E-I-N, Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land.

It’s a classic science fiction novel from 1961.

You may even recognize it.

It’s the kind of book you might have read as a kid and forgotten about.

Excellent.

Well, I may have to pick up that book and read it to my daughter.

Yeah, well, now, Chris, here’s the question.

What do you say to your boss?

Are you going to tell your boss that he’s using a word that isn’t really correct?

It’s his own word, but nobody else uses it that way.

It’s good now I can kind of clarify and help him speak this word correctly.

All right.

Let’s hope he grocks it.

That’s right.

Thanks, Chris.

All right.

Take care, guys.

Best of luck.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye now.

You know, Jeff Prucher did a book called Brave New Words.

Right, right, right.

It’s about science fiction terms that have entered mainstream English, more or less.

Yeah, that’s a fun book.

Call us about what you’re hearing on the job.

I just know your workplace is filled with this interesting language, and at the moment you hear it, you’re like, Huh, I should call Martha and Grant.

Well, now’s the time, 877-929-9673.

Or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.