Comment by arjan_sch

13 hours ago

What about "worseprovement"

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?

  • It's totally plausible portmanteau. I get the feeling thought that it sounds more marked in English than in German where these kind of mashups are formed more freely.

  • The sibling post's "disimprovement" sounds more natural and has parallel form with pre-existing broadly accepted English words like "disincentive" and "disinfect".

    • Not sure if that's just me, but "disimprovement" sounds like *removing* an improvement that was previously there…

  • It's definitely a normal-sounding, memorable word for us native English speakers.

    Meanwhile I won't be able to remember that German word longer than it takes me to close this tab. Vershumthingsomething.

Isn't the English word more or less "regression"? If you want to coin a new word, how about updowngrade?

  • "updowngrade", funnily enough, I would understand as having the (IMO misunderstood/wrong) meaning you're trying to give to "Verschlimmbesserung" in your post here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483585 (making some parts better and some other parts worse.)

    That's not what "worseprovement" conveys to me, you can worseprove a single part, intending to make it better, making that same thing actually worse by the very same change.