Is there a name for this specific concept? Where somebody invents something (to do them good) but then that thing turns around and backfires on them?
There’s the phrase “Hoist by their own petard” but not sure if that’s specific enough to inventions, probably not.
I really hope there’s a single word for it out there… more convenient yanno.
There’s probably a long and complex German word for it :-)
There’s probably a German word for the concept that there is a German word for everything.
Indeed - for OP’s purposes, I came up with this (but I don’t speak German, so it may make no sense at all): Erfindungselbstfehlzündung
Google seems to like it well enough!
Or better, Erfindungdererfinderselbstfehlzündung:
The first one kinda works, but I think it’d be more clear, when used without “selbst”/self, as this would be read to reference the invention instead of the inventor.
On the other hand, that then feels like “yeah, it didn’t work. The invention misfired and is crap”. Maybe “Erfindungserschafferzerstörer”? (Invention’s creator destructor) but that sounds off, too.
There’s not really a word that I can come up with that really conveys this meaning. There’s a german saying “wer Andern eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein” (he, who digs a hole for others, will fall into it by itself). Then there’s the humorous “Rohrkrepierer” (along the lines of “died in the barrel”) which basically means something like “dead on arrival” / that went wrong and didn’t work. So it’d be probably something that references one of those, which would make it work culturally?
A “Thomas Midgley Jr.”
Alfred Nobel might be considered a runner up, but I feel he recovered his reputation. That and I don’t think anyone but himself really was upset with the path his invention took.
I know you wanted a word, but I nominate “Midgley” to be the new word for that. “To midgley something” is to attempt to create something of value that instead only makes things worse. It’s an improvement in the negative direction.
