A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address
Used as a transferred name to someone who is displaying great intelligence, or ironically to a person who is showing signs of stupidity. The allusion is to Albert Einstein (1879–1955), the Nobel Prize winning physicist, most famous for his theory of relativity. In 1939 he was stressing the urgency of investigating the use of atomic energy in bombs. Einstein was born in Germany but became an American citizen.
Waterfront, by Budd Schulberg, has a young man counting money. He becomes confused and says ‘I gotta start over.’ ‘Skip it, Einstein,’ says a man who is present, with friendly contempt. In A Kind of Loving, by Stan Barstow, occurs: ‘Over in one corner, curled up as peaceful as if he’s by himself in the middle of a field, there’s young Jim, with his nose in a book, as per. I reach past somebody and touch his knee. C’mon Einstein.’ The younger brother addressed here is considered to be studious.
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