einstein

name

1. Albert Einstein, the world-famous 20th-century theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity.

   “Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations. EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to be, but Nobody Need Worry. A BOOK FOR 12 WISE MEN No More in All the World Could Comprehend it, Said Einstein When His Daring Publishers Accepted it.”

   “Einstein said he could never understand it all / Planets spinning through space”

   “Gaston: Picasso, Einstein, Schmendiman. Somehow it doesn't have a ring.”

   “We're sitting in a coffee shop in Sunnyvale, California. It's late. I've had a few beers, and my dinner date has downed a few plum wines. I peer deep into his eyes, trying to figure out why so many people throughout the high tech universe think Henry Massalin could be the Einstein of our time.”

   “If Einstein, my dear / Were a toll booth cashier / I imagine he too would be [bored]”

2. A surname from German.

noun

1. (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.”

2. (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.”

3. (informal)A genius; a very smart person.

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

4. (broadly, informal, sarcastic)A genius; a very smart person.

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

5. 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.”)”