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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

flux capacitor en · NOUN

Etymology

First seen in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension in 1984 and in the 1985 American science fiction film Back to the Future, directed by Robert Zemeckis, in which a DMC DeLorean vehicle is retrofitted with a flux capacitor to create a time travel device.

Meanings

  1. A fictional instrument required to operate a time machine, consisting of a rectangular-shaped compartment with three flashing Geissler-style tubes arranged in a "Y" configuration.
    • Tucked into the corner of the Rinky Dink Flea Market in Marietta is a time machine that transports its visitors to an era before digital music. It doesn’t need a flux capacitor to work, just a plug to power the vintage stereos and turntables that produce the sounds of the thousands of vinyl records sold there. 2019 January 12, Chad Plauche-Adkins, “Playing the classics: Flea market music collection includes thousands of records”, in The Marietta Times:
    • Is this a glitch? Is the system experiencing an outage? It is a temptation that is best resisted, the urge to talk about this Chelsea team as a piece of fine-point engineering, to style Thomas Tuchel as a pure systems man, poring over his data charts, banging his dials, reconfiguring the flux capacitor with a bent hairpin. 2021 December 4, Barney Ronay, “Thomas Tuchel must gear up for a new phase to reboot glitching Chelsea”, in The Guardian:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
flux capacitors Number=Plur lexicographic

Relateds

lateral flux capacitor

Translations (10)

cmn 通量電容器 /通量电容器 (the device that enables time travel) · pt capacitor de fluxo (the device that enables time travel) · nl fluxcondensator (the device that enables time travel) · fr condensateur de flux (the device that enables time travel) · it flusso canalizzatore (the device that enables time travel) · es condensador de fluzo (the device that enables time travel) · ru конденсатор потока (the device that enables time travel) · he קבל שטף (the device that enables time travel) · de Fluxkompensator (the device that enables time travel) · pt condensador de fluxo (the device that enables time travel)

wikipedia: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension · wikipedia: DMC DeLorean · wikipedia: Back to the Future · wikipedia: DeLorean time machine · wikipedia: Robert Zemeckis