What is "dilbert"

Dilbert is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. The strip is known for its satirical office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring engineer Dilbert as the title character. The strip has spawned several books, an animated television series, a video game, and hundreds of Dilbert-themed merchandise items. Dilbert Future and The Joy of Work are among the most read books in the series. Adams received the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award in 1997 and the Newspaper Comic Strip Award in the same year for his work on the strip. Dilbert appears online and in 2,000 newspapers worldwide in 65 countries and 25 languages.

Dilbert is a fictional character and the main character and protagonist of the Dilbert comic strip. He is a white collar office worker who has a rare medical condition characterized by an extreme intuition about all things mechanical and electrical (and utter social ineptitude), an idea that an animated television episode explored and is titled "The Knack". He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Although his ideas typically are sensible and occasionally even revolutionary, seldom does anyone pursue them because he is powerless. He finds himself easily frustrated by the incompetence and/or malevolence of his co-workers (most often the Pointy-Haired Boss) and often is sarcastic and snide. Dilbert's unusual name was suggested to Scott Adams by a co-worker; Adams later found that the name likely came from a cartoon character used by the United States Navy during World War II.

In an interview with The New York Times Adams said that he based Dilbert's character on someone he knew, saying: "I worked around engineers for most of my 16 years of corporate life. Dilbert is actually designed after one person in particular. Interestingly, that person is not aware that he is the model for Dilbert. I didn’t know him well and never mentioned it to him."

Dilbert may refer to

• Dilbert, an American comic strip
  • Dilbert (character), the title character of the comic strip
  • Dilbert (TV series), a television series based on the comic strip
  • The Dilbert principle, a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing
• Dilbert the Pilot, a World War II-era cartoon character who is a bumbling navy pilot
• Dilbert Dunker, a device for training air pilots to escape a submerged plane

Dilbert is an animated television series adaptation of the comic strip of the same name, produced by Adelaide Productions, Idbox, and United Media and distributed by Columbia TriStar Television. The first episode was broadcast on January 25, 1999, and was UPN's highest-rated comedy series premiere at that point in the network's history; it lasted two seasons with thirty episodes on UPN and won a Primetime Emmy before its cancellation.