einstein meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

Einstein

nounalso spelled Einstein

CA, US, NZ, UK, SC /ˈaɪnˌstaɪn/ · AU /ˈɑenˌstɑen/

Etymology Borrowed from German Einstein. * The common noun is an eponym of Albert Einstein.

Sarcastic, Sometimes An extremely clever or intelligent person.

Can you believe he's just a kindergartener? It looks like they've got an Einstein in the family.
Good job, Einstein, thinking you could grab the wires with your pliers.

einstein

noun

Etymology Named in honor of Albert Einstein, who explained the photoelectric effect.

Dated One mole of photons, regardless of frequency, as used to measure irradiance.

The einstein (symbol E) is an obsolete unit with two conflicting definitions.

Informal A genius; a very smart person.

He's a prodigy — they call him their little einstein.

Broadly, Informal, Sarcastic An idiot; a very stupid person.

Yeah, that guy is a real einstein — he always finds a way to mess up the simplest order.

Derived terms: microeinstein
Related terms: no shit, Sherlock

einstein

noun

Etymology From German ein Stein, "one stone", coined by scientists in recent decades, but with tongue-in-cheek tacit acknowledgment of the homonymy with einstein and Einstein; "a pun playing with the famous scientist's name and the German term "ein Stein" for "one stone".

Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Physics, Sciences A shape that can be repeated to cover a plane with a nonrepeating pattern.

In less poetic terms, an einstein is an “aperiodic monotile,” a shape that tiles a plane, or an infinite two-dimensional flat surface, but only in a nonrepeating pattern. (The term “einstein” comes from the German “ein stein,” or “one stone” — more loosely, “one tile” or “one shape.”)2023 March 28, Siobhan Roberts, “Elusive ‘Einstein’ Solves a Longstanding Math Problem. And it all began with a hobbyist “messing about and experimenting with shapes””, in New York Times, retrieved 28 Mar 2023:

Related terms: aperiodic, monotiling, tessellation

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for Einstein and einstein.