Rube Goldberg

American  

Also Rube Goldbergian.

adjective

1. having a fantastically complicated, improvised appearance.

   a Rube Goldberg arrangement of flasks and test tubes.

2. deviously complex and impractical.

   a Rube Goldberg scheme for reducing taxes.

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Goldberg, Rube Cultural  

1. A twentieth-century American cartoonist and sculptor. He was famous for his humorous diagrams of incredibly intricate machines designed to carry out simple tasks.

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A “Rube Goldberg contraption” is a machine with many apparently extraneous parts, which appears to have been designed by patchwork.

Etymology

Origin of Rube Goldberg

1955–60; after Rube ( Reuben ) Goldberg

Example Sentences

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

That frenzy to create a "mini-primary" or some kind of Rube Goldberg mechanism to pick a candidate was largely based on that knee-jerk opinion.

From Salon • Sep. 13, 2024

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

Even as automated pinsetters evolved over the years, they remained Rube Goldberg devices, made of gears, levers and spinning mechanisms that needed lots of electricity, full-time mechanics and expensive replacement parts.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 21, 2023

A Republican senator from Pennsylvania called the Mercury capsule-Atlas rocket pairing “a Rube Goldberg device on top of a plumber’s nightmare.”

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly