Schlimmbesserung

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Tim McDaniel writes me to point out net discussions of the useful
>German word "Schlimmbesserung" 'correcting badly' in English, used to
>refer to making a mistake when correcting someone else's mistake (an
>all too common event, in my experience).  Unfortunately, there seem
>to be some who use it to refer to corrections that make things worse
>-- also a common event (familiar to those who use Miscrosoft Word's
>grammar checker, for instance), but not the same thing.

German "Schlimmbesserung" seems to be a relatively uncommon equivalent of
"Verschlimmbesserung", meaning "worsening [something] in an attempt to
improve [it]" (apparently corresponding to the second interpretation above,
according to my naive impression): I guess the transitive verb
"verschlimmbessern" is a combination of "verbessern" and "verschlimmern".

The Grimm dictionary on-line gives "schlimmbessern" = "verschlechtern in
der absicht zu verbessern", with derived "Schlimmbesserung".

Perhaps someone expert in German can correct me, or add something.

-- Doug Wilson