having a fantastically complicated, improvised appearance.
a Rube Goldberg arrangement of flasks and test tubes.
deviously complex and impractical.
a Rube Goldberg scheme for reducing taxes.
A “Rube Goldberg contraption” is a machine with many apparently extraneous parts, which appears to have been designed by patchwork.
1955–60; after Rube ( Reuben ) Goldberg
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
This, of course, is an example of a Rube Goldberg machine—an overly complex mechanism that performs a simple task.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
After that fall, each bout of sickness or medical procedure causes a cruel chain reaction, like a diabolical Rube Goldberg machine.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 10, 2025
When ARID1A is mutated, a microscopic chain of events analogous to a Rube Goldberg machine is set off in the cancer cell.
From Science Daily • May 15, 2024
With enough proteins, you can form "sentences" — in this case, biological pathways that are a little like microscopic Rube Goldberg machines that allow life to do, well, everything.
From Salon • Mar. 1, 2023
They passed on from there to a Travel Hall, where they saw the car covered with tiles, and the functioning Rube Goldberg chicken device and the rusting Burma Shave ads on the wall.
From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
