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.

My Grandfather built his own fuel injector with a Rube Goldberg set-up made of old plumbing parts.

Rube Goldberg by Unidyne December 29, 2003

Rube Goldberg

Unnecessarily complicated design or construction, to do something simple.

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 ExoSkeletalProgrammer November 19, 2020

Rube Goldberg

(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.

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

Rube Goldberg by sander and drill April 19, 2006

Rube Goldberg Syndrome 

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).

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 Syndrome by Andy Khay January 23, 2009

Rube Goldberg Alcoholism 

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

"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 Alcoholism by Bourbonsauce January 21, 2010

Rube Goldberg Machine 

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.

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!

Rube Goldberg Machine by loveisjujujubaby March 13, 2010