The Right Word

As Confucius says (Analects 58): "If terms are incorrect, language will be incongruous; and if language be incongruous, deeds will be imperfect... Hence, a man of superior mind, certain of his terms, is fitted to speak; and being certain of what he says can proceed upon it."

Awhile back i encountered the German term Verschlimmbesserung--an "improvement" that makes things worse (via BetterThanEnglish dot com). This seems very much of our times, when tamper monkeys not only have seized control of the means of production, they also seem infected with a restlessness entirely disconnected from any awareness of the consequence of their actions.

I thought about finding an easier to remember word. Clearly, abprovement & deprovement (rather than simply mux up et al) retain the turn of wit upon the original. As it happens, the latter has already occurred, as well as the slightly more clumsy disimprovement...--Nor unprovement, nor antiprovement.

Investigating the roots brings us to the antonym ameliorate (from Latin ad + melior) & thus, the rare pejorate. A word that survives only in a adjective pejorative--& a meaning not quite what i was thinking of. (Besides, i can't imagine using pejoration in a colloquy!)

Too, some of the same territory is covered by exacerbate (the word i would use in a formal essay), as well as the old meaning of aggravate, before it started dissolving into "irritate"... Alas, you can't really distinguish the noun of the thing-improved from the act of improving, with either of these.

The need is felt. Unless Vulcan or Lojban (malxauzmagau isn't right, though something could be done with the attitudinals .ianai or je'unai; nardragau seems closer still) can come to our aid (okay, in Esperanto you can say plibonigacxo), we may just have to settle for disimprovement.

(Update.) As a thing to symbolize it, the CD (or as i call it, "disco compacto") fits the bill. And most of the real Verschlimmbesserungen we see come as memos, so maybe that will come to be their new meaning... Then, going back to the original idea, we do have bungle & misrepair (too much like disrepair). Better: MISFIX.