Rube Goldberg

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.

Goldberg, Rube

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.

Notes

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of Rube Goldberg¹

1955–60; after Rube ( Reuben ) Goldberg

Example Sentences

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

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

Skinner and his pigeons, into behaviorism — a school of thought that considered behavior a Rube Goldberg machine of stimulus and response governed by reflex, disregarding interior mental states and emotional response.

From New York Times

All those Rube Goldberg contraptions we used to make our marriages equal, like hiring a house cleaner, the nanny, and family who lives close by, were stripped away.

From Salon

We ended up with a Rube Goldberg sequestration compromise that ended up serving the Democrats better than the Republicans, thankfully.

From Salon