Verschlimmbesserung – making it worse by making it better

Of all the German terms for which we don’t have exact equivalents, Verschlimmbesserung – the act of making something worse by trying to make it better – may be the most poetic. It roughly translates as “If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it”. Here are four examples of it.

DIY

If the 2012 case of the “Monkey Christ” taught us anything, the act of trying to improve a painting can easily ruin it. A devout octogenarian decided to “fix” a fresco in the church of the small Spanish town where she lived, turning a respectable Jesus into a blurry potato. The same is true of DIY. By the time you capitulate and summon a professional, the problem will be twice as bad and the humiliation twice as acute.

Going on a diet The road to a Verschlimmbesserung

is paved with good intentions. You wake up, resolved to cut down on carbohydrates. It goes swimmingly for the first day. Maybe two days. But before you know it, you relapse at the biscuit tin. Soon, you are fatter than when you began, not to say depressed and bristling with self-recrimination.

Cutting your own hair

Glancing in the mirror before a date, you are struck by a strange and shaggy-looking figure. Just lopping a bit off the fringe and buzzing the neck fuzz with clippers should do it. But now it’s uneven – so you have to do a bit more. In this way, your personal appearance dies by a thousand cuts.

Personal rebranding

Once in a while, every company feels the urge to tweak something to improve its product. After Weightwatchers became WW, it had to issue a profit warning. The same applies for personal rebrands, as attempted by undergraduates as long as universities have existed. We can’t run from our true selves.