massage -
verb and noun (Business World) transitive verb: To manipulate (figures, computer data, etc.) so as to give them a more
acceptable or desirable appearance.
noun : The action of manipulating figures or data in this way. Etymology: A figurative application of
massage, which had already been used metaphorically in the sixties to refer to the 'touching up' of written material such as an official report.
History and Usage: The business use of the word dates from the mid seventies, when the widespread application of computing to business statistics made data
massage possible. During the eighties, the
verb in particular became increasingly common, and it is now usually printed without inverted commas. In most cases, the activity is not actually fraudulent, but takes
place on the fringes of
legality and propriety as a way of putting the desired 'spin' on the data. Figures which have been manipulated in this way are described by the adjective
massaged. He...uses the manipulated data to prove the link
between money and prices...Professor Hendry's feat, however, is to take this heavily
massaged data and show that not even such distortion can save the empirical support for Friedman's
theory . Guardian Weekly 25 Dec. 1983, p.
9 The headline writers will be wondering endlessly about Mrs Thatcher's
choice of an election date; with the drear descant that, if she delays, the figures for the following year will have to be
massaged all over again. Guardian 20 July 1989, p.
22 Numbers can be
massaged by putting them in different places in the accounts...but it
is difficult to manipulate them
over several years.
Business Apr . 1990, p.
59 See also creative
