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- In the age of LLMs it is important to have vocabulary that survives when taken out of context - German nouns fit that very well. In my own project I decided to use phrases of two words (often with a hyphen) for all technical terms (terms that have special meaning in my project).
And by the way I also started using Auftragstaktik as an anchor for a methodology of writing plans and prompts.
by zby - It's actually a verb, "Verschlimmbesserung" is the substantivization.
Base: verschlimmbessern
Present conjugation: I verschlimmbesser[e], you verschlimmbesserst, he/she/it verschlimmbessert, we verschlimmbesser[e]n, (plural-)you verschlimmbessert, they verschlimmbesser[e]n
Past/perfect: verschlimmbessert (e.g. "it got verschlimmbessert")
Imperative: verschlimmbesser[e] (e.g. "don't verschlimmbesser that!")
The [e] at the end is leftover from an older form, in the cases where I omitted it it would sound archaic to a German speaker, but in the other cases it's equivalent or may even sound better. It's also regionally different. The archaic versions kinda sound south German (Swabian, Bavarian).
[ed. made some adjustments]
P.S.: "Verbesserung" means improvement, "Verschlimmerung" means worsening/aggravation. The combined word is understood quite specifically though, not just as a combination of the two. It's *not* a normal case of German "paste words together", that's for nouns (you can do it with the substantivization, e.g. Donaudampfschiffverschlimmbesserungskapitän = "captain of verschlimmbessern the steam ships on the Donau", which makes little sense of course). It's not identical to enshittification either, the latter (to me at least) implies intention; verschlimmbessern you can (and probably often will) do by accident.
by eqvinox - Cases apply only to nouns; the present and past perfect are called tenses.by schoen
- Would there be a semantic difference between Verschlimmbesserung and Verbesserschlimmung?
- It's not totally clear from the examples given, but I feel like in some cases these changes aren't a genuine effort to improve things. They're just a sort of cycle of changing things to chase fads or look busy.by BrenBarn
- >attempted improvement that only makes things worse
Unless I'm mistaken, Russian has a wonderful idiom for this: "bear job"
by devindotcom - "Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда."by jimbobimbo
- Can you post the word in Russian?by illiac786
- That actually also exists in German! Bärendienst, although it is not 100% the same as Verschlimmbesserung.by remuskaos
- It‘s „bear service“, and context is slightly different. You do bear service to someone, and Verschlimmbesserung is on something. Both signal intent to do something good, but doing bear service is an act of screwing up while doing that, no prior condition required, and Verschlimmbesserung is the outcome of such attempt applied to something that was ok before.by ivan_gammel
- „Verschlimbesserung” is what your spouse thinks about each of your improvements to the home automation setup, or, indeed, the whole idea of home automation.
- What about "worseprovement"by arjan_sch
- “wrongbetterment”by mc32
- Similar, when you get an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time, I've proposed "bonalty": bonus + penalty.by SilasX
- I prefer “misprovement”, as in “misfeature”.by layer8
- How about "bloat". Something that doesn't need to be there, and it would be better if it wasn't, but it was typically added with some misguided "good intentions". Bloat.
This also applies to changing something. If it was perfect, and you changed it, and now it's not perfect anymore, then the work itself didn't need to happen, and was therefore bloat.
Most work is bloat. But we have tied continued existence to work (mostly -- we mistake work for value), so we've made infinite bloating appear mandatory.
As an aside, most of the human psychology (assumptions, beliefs etc.) is also bloat, and similarly benefits from debloating.
by andai - Isn't the English word more or less "regression"? If you want to coin a new word, how about updowngrade?by OroPla
- As a German, I might not have thought of that but would absolutely use it to translate Verschlimmbesserung. Does it sound "normal" enough to native English speakers?by eqvinox
- Alternatively "disimprovement".
Via https://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=49... and https://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=16...
by qznc - "It is called Verschlimmbesserung: an attempted improvement that only makes things worse."
Hmmm. So, the literal transation would be:
"Verschlimm" - worsen, negative, step back. "Besserung" - improvement, getting better than before.
So, I would translate it as "an effort to improve something but actually making it worse in the process".
There is an old video clip in german about this, actually; I think it was from Loriot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI
Video quality is bad, there are probably better ones but it has english subtitles. The idea here is basically the guy tries to improve something, but in the end kind of causes the whole room to become devastated. That's kind of Verschlimmbesserung: meaning to do well, but failing to do so and causing more harm than good. (Also in the comments people connect this to Friedrich Merz; the guy is really losing popular support by the minute now. Just recently where he was unhappy how real people ask him critical questions.)
by shevy-java - People equate work with value.
That's largely a function of incentives.
If a startup could have been a 100 line PHP script, instead of 50 microservices, then you wouldn't be able to work on it for the next 10 years, and hire 5 of your buds from school.
by andai - I would probably abbreviate that to v17g.by alhirzel
- Ironically, that would be an example of Verschlimmbesserung.by layer8
- I usually relate this to people chasing good reviews at work. Maintaining a system and keeping it bug-free doesn't get people promoted.
Doing something large, inventing a bunch of metrics, and showing that you improve on those metrics does.
by OptionOfT - German here. A "Verschlimmbesserung" is something that makes one part better and another part worse. If it only makes things worse you don't need a German word for it, you can just call it worse.
For things that were intended good, but ended up bad, there's an English idiom: the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
by OroPla - No, just no.by spacechild1
- Yeah, no, it means wanting to make things better but ending up making them worse.by juvvel
- As opposed to Vershittification, the perfect union of terms from the two languages.
- I think that's a subtle Verschlimmbesserung of the original definition.by rwoerz
- > For things that were intended good, but ended up bad, there's an English idiom:
Better is the enemy of good.
Old Italian proverb: "il meglio è nemico del bene"
Shakespeare, King Lear: "Striving to better, oft we mar what's well".