Rube Goldberg Definition| Urban Word Dictionary

Rube Goldberg

An unlikely and absurdly designed machine intended to perform a simple function in the most complicated and indirect way. Named in honor of Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an engineer with the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department who became a Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author. His long-running comic strip, "Inventions", displayed many such devices of his own design.

Rube Goldberg

by ExoSkeletalProgrammer on Nov 20, 2020 06:21:33

Unnecessarily complicated design or construction, to do something simple.

Example:
The water filled the bucket, the bucket weighed down causing a lever to move, causing a radio to turn on, causing vibrations and moving a ping pong ball down a small slope of wood, causing a domino chain to fall and to hit a switch, causing a light bulb to turn on. That is a Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg

by sander and drill on Mar 24, 2006 05:07:42

(Verb) To slack off for 4 weeks on a school project while the competition works for the entire time straigt. The night before the project is due have one group member take it home put some crap together and barely make a working project, the next day, at the big competition between many schools, your project wins first place while the other groups project crashes and burns. Your project later falls apart on the bus ride home.

Example:
I totally pulled a Rube Goldberg out of my ass on that one, 1st place up in here.

Rube Goldberg Syndrome

by Andy Khay on Jan 23, 2009 23:23:52

n. The situation whereby a medical or medical/psychiatric condition causes a "domino effect" of other dangerous symptoms and conditions ensuing.

Named after the Rube Goldberg "contraption" machine, any machine that uses a chain reaction of events to achieve a final, trivial goal (in this particular case, possibly death).

Example:
After my brother had that bout with strep, it apparently got to his stomach and paralyzed it, giving him a nasty case of acid reflux, which in turn began to launch acid clear up into his throat and mouth, not only severely damaging his teeth... he's also he's worried he's going to get cancer one day from all that acid where it's not supposed to be. And to say nothing about all the dental surgeries he's gonna need... talk about a case of Rube Goldberg Syndrome!

(No really, it has happened.)

Rube Goldberg Alcoholism

by Bourbonsauce on Jan 21, 2010 11:27:06

Drunkenly setting a series of events in motion that ends in tragedy.

Example:
"How did the fire start?"
"Well, Mark was wasted and in reaching for his cell phone knocked over a glass, that fell on a power strip, that set the couch on fire"
"I see, classic Rube Goldberg Alcoholism"

Rube Goldberg Machine

by loveisjujujubaby on Mar 14, 2010 09:28:34

Basically, a 'machine' that uses many ordinary items, and positions them in a way so that when activated, sometimes by 'knocking down the first domino' so to speak, it leads to a series of events that are all activated by the previous events.
They are most always elaborate, with many things going on at one time.
They are hard to build, and sometimes take over 4 months and a millions hours to build, but the results are spectacular.

Example:
Child 1: Hey, let's play Mouse Trap!
Child 2: I heard that's something called a Rube Goldberg Machine!

Teen 1: Have you seen Ok Go's new video, 'This Too Shall Pass'? It's totally a Rube Goldberg Machine!

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