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Rube Goldberg
adjective
- 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.
Goldberg, Rube
- 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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Notes
A “Rube Goldberg contraption” is a machine with many apparently extraneous parts, which appears to have been designed by patchwork.
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Word History and Origins
Origin of Rube Goldberg1
1955–60; after Rube ( Reuben ) Goldberg
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