gronk

gronk

See also: Gronk, grónk, and grønk

English

Etymology 1

A photo of a sign in a bar describing a 'no gronk policy'.

Noun

gronk (plural gronks)

1. (Australia, derogatory, informal) An unintelligent and callous person.

References

"gronk" in The Macquarie Dictionary Online

Etymology 2

Imitative.

Verb

gronk (third-person singular simple present gronks, present participle gronking, simple past and past participle gronked)

1. (computing, slang, intransitive) Of a floppy disk drive: to produce mechanical sounds of operation.
   • 1990, Compute (volume 12, issues 1-5, page 62)

     They say a good detective always starts at the beginning, so I installed the program on my VGA PC's hard drive. As the computer gronked away, copying six 5¼-inch floppies, I wondered why, if bad detectives start at the end, […]

   • 1993, Iris Forrest, Computer Tales of Fact and Fantasy:

     […] a disk drive gronked, her screen bloomed, and suddenly there was an icon in the upper right corner.

   • 1994, Bryan Pfaffenberger, I Hate PCs:

     The next startup event is the computer's attempt to read a disk in drive A. But, there is no disk in drive A, remember? You were supposed to remove any disk in this drive. So, you hear a lot of pathetic gronking and grakking until the computer gives up […]

2. (computing, slang, intransitive, rare) To fail; to crash or go wrong.
   • 1992, Charlottesville Computer Users' Group: CCUG

     Repeats the last 40 lines of IRC output, in case your terminal gronked.

   • 2010, Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (25th Anniversary Edition)

     The other faction centered on […] what went on under the [model railway] layout. This was The System, […] and it was constantly being improved, revamped, perfected, and sometimes "gronked"—in club jargon, screwed up.