Absolutely, I think you used the word perfectly. Have you read Stranger In A Strange Land? The alien word "grok" from that book has a similar way of being usef

Absolutely, I think you used the word perfectly. Have you read Stranger In A Strange Land? The alien word "grok" from that book has a similar way of being useful, and that one actually managed to make it into general speech somehow - at least by hacker types. In the book it's an alien word that literally means "to drink", though it really means something like "attain a real understanding of."