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
“Fall River Fishing,” written by Zuzanna Szadkowski and Deborah Knox, who also star, is a Rube Goldberg machine of a play: an entertaining spectacle of seemingly disparate parts that are actually interconnected.
From New York Times • Feb. 28, 2023
To Deloria’s way of thinking, not only overkill but the entire Clovis-first theory is a theoretical Rube Goldberg device.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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.
