Beaker

Lab Assistant in The Muppet Show. Generally ends up at the wrong end of a science experiment, and appears to know what he has coming, hence is worried expression and somewhat panicked noises he makes. He owns an amazing trapdoor of a mouth.

In the United States Antarctic Program non-scientists on the ice call scientists beakers. The term comes from the Muppet character beaker with the mouse trap mouth who says nothing but, "mememememememe."

Beaker is not a fundamentally derogatory term, though some researchers react negatively when called that. To most it is a term of distant endearment as long as it is not preceded by an explicative. Like everything in Antarctica the word fuck used as a modifier denotes frustration, and indeed, every word in Antarctica is graced with the appending or prepending of a tense of fuck by every person at one time or another. Thus, when someone goes from being a "beaker", to a "fucking beaker", one has crossed a boundary of civility that would have been best left alone in such close, isolated quarters.

People who are not "beakers" on the ice are called "people".

Beak"er (?), n. [OE. biker; akin to Icel. bikarr, Sw. bagare, Dan. baeger, G. becher, It. bicchiere; -- all fr. LL. bicarium, prob. fr. Gr. wine jar, or perh. L. bacar wine vessel. Cf. Pitcher a jug.]

1.

A large drinking cup, with a wide mouth, supported on a foot or standard.

2.

An open-mouthed, thin glass vessel, having a projecting lip for pouring; -- used for holding solutions requiring heat.

Knight.

 

© Webster 1913.