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gronk

noun, verb — 8 senses

gronk

nounalso spelled Gronk
1

Australia, Derogatory, Informal An unintelligent and callous person.

gronk

verb

Etymology Imitative.

1

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences Slang Of a floppy disk drive: to produce mechanical sounds of operation.

  • 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, […]1990, Compute, volume 12, numbers 1-5, page 62:
  • […] a disk drive gronked, her screen bloomed, and suddenly there was an icon in the upper right corner.1993, Iris Forrest, Computer Tales of Fact and Fantasy:
1 more example
  • 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 […]1994, Bryan Pfaffenberger, I Hate PCs:
2

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences Rare, Slang To fail; to crash or go wrong.

  • Repeats the last 40 lines of IRC output, in case your terminal gronked.1992, Charlottesville Computer Users' Group: CCUG:
  • 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.2010, Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (25th Anniversary Edition)

gronk

verb

Etymology Onomatopoeic

1

To make a gronking sound.

  • A raven gronked along the timber-covered ridge line, and a cool breeze swept down from the snow-covered peaks.2001, G. Stewart Nash, The Last Three Hundred Miles, page 96:
  • Juan Bautista handed the raven off to a perch—it gronked and protested—and took a seat on his couch.2007, Kage Baker, The Graveyard Game, page 34:
1 more example
  • The rush of water behind me, the soft drip from the trees, ravens gronking far off—these were the only sounds I heard.2017, Robert Michael Pyle, Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide, unnumbered page:

Gronk

noun
1

Rail transport, Railways, Transport UK A British Rail Class 09 locomotive.

gronk

noun

Etymology Onomatopoeic

› a harsh grating sound.

1

The cry of a raven.

  • Silence rang in my ears, punctuated by the occasional gronk of the ravens, as they flitted about in the spruce trees.2006, Terrence Rundle West, Run of the Town, page 153:
  • Her call elicited an annoyed gronk above her head, and she looked up to see a raven lifting off the cliff face.2010, Diane Lee Wilson, Raven Speak, page 6:
1 more example
  • My raven launched himself into the dark above with a gronk of amusement.2021, David Reed, Raven Queen, Rise, unnumbered page:
2

A mating call of the Albert's lyrebird.

  • We then viewed the audio spectrogram...and measured the timing of each gronk.2024, Fiona Backhouse, Justin A. Welbergen, Bryce W. Robinson and Anastasia H. Dalziell, “Performative Manipulation of the Environment by Displaying Albert’s Lyrebirds”, in The American Naturalist, volume 204, number 2, page 183:
3

Rail transport, Railways, Transport UK, Slang A British Rail Class 08 shunter locomotive, or similar shunters.

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for gronk and Gronk.