Heath Robinson
noun & adjective

- an excessively ingenious or ramshackle contrivance.

- absurdly complicated in design while performing a simple function.

- used to describe an awkwardly ingenious machine made from improvised parts.

- describing a mechanical device that is ridiculously over-complicated for a simple purpose.

Merriam-Webster, Cambridge  Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Dictionary Com

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The expression comes from British illustrator William Heath Robinson (1872–1944), whose wonderfully detailed cartoons showed fantastically complicated machines carrying out ridiculously simple tasks: peeling potatoes, opening umbrellas, buttering toast or catching cats.

His inventions usually featured pulleys, kettles, ropes, weights, candles, bicycle wheels and large quantities of knotted string, all operated by earnest gentlemen in waistcoats.

During the First World War, soldiers began calling improvised military equipment "Heath Robinson" because it resembled his cartoons. By 1917 the name had already become a common noun in English, and today it describes almost any ingenious but absurdly over-engineered device.

In American English, the closest equivalent is Rube Goldberg, named after another cartoonist who independently developed a similar comic style.

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THE LONG WAY ROUND

Most of us have built a Heath Robinson solution without meaning to. A chair wedged against a door because the latch is broken. A phone balanced on a pile of books for a video call. One extension lead plugged into another because the cable is just too short.

These arrangements often work perfectly well. That's the funny part.

They also say something about us. We tend to think that complicated means clever. A long explanation can sound more convincing than a short one. A gadget with twenty buttons somehow feels more capable than one with three. In practice, the opposite is often true. Good design usually removes parts instead of adding them. The best tools are often the ones you hardly notice because they simply do the job.

That doesn't mean improvised solutions are bad. Quite the opposite. They show how resourceful people can be when they have to make do with what's at hand.

The trick is knowing when to stop. If our solution keeps growing longer, heavier and stranger, it may be worth asking whether we’ve solved the problem—or just made it more interesting. Maybe another piece of string is indeed what's needed to fix the hosepipe, however sometimes it's easier to just fetch the watering can.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

ad hoc, botched-together, contrived, convoluted, cobbled-together, harum-scarum, HEATH ROBINSON, improvised, jerry-rigged, jury-rigged, lash-up, makeshift, over-engineered, overwrought, ramshackle, rickety, Rube Goldberg (US), ramshackle, slapdash, tortuous, unnecessarily elaborate, unwieldy

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“It’s interesting to identify HEATH ROBINSON improvisations in the world around us.”

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