The heralded comeback of “value” stock mutual funds in 2000 gets my vote for least impressive financial development of the year.

Yes, it’s true that value funds, broadly defined as those specializing in out-of-favor stocks, are doing better this year, while growth funds, which emphasize more glamorous, fast-growing companies, have cooled down.

If things keep up as they have through the first 10 months of 2000, various measures of value stocks will outperform the corresponding growth gauges for the first time since, oh, about 1993.

Only trouble is, that tidbit of information has few practical uses. Growth and value have always been hazy terms at best, and I’d wager that whatever substance there was behind them is diminishing even as we speak.

The whole question is like asking a horse-racing fan which kind of runner is a better bet, a front-running sprinter or a come-from-behind closer. The only sensible answer is that it depends on the race.

Perhaps you think of growth vs. value not as an either-or proposition, but as a line of demarcation to use in diversifying your portfolio. Sounds good, but what definitions of the terms do you use?

If any of the quantities we’re trying to understand here the economy, the stock market, individual mutual funds and individual stocks were static entities, grouping them into broad categories would make sense. But they aren’t, and never will be.

A look at a few specific mutual funds gives you an idea how muddled the whole issue can be. One handy set of proxies for growth and value pits the Vanguard Growth Index Fund, made up of the stocks with higher-than-average ratios of price-to-book (theoretical liquidating) value in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, against the Vanguard Value Index Fund, which includes the stocks with lower-than-average ratios of price-to-book value.

Vanguard Value Index has gained 5 percent so far this year, and Vanguard Growth Index is down 11 percent. Hey, value wins!

It’ll have to make up a lot more ground, though, to catch up in the three-year rankings, where it shows a 12 percent annual return compared with growth index’s 19 percent. Huge gap, that.

If you’re inclined to use the two funds as a basis for diversification, putting half your money in each, there’s a simpler way to go. Just buy both in a single package, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

Meanwhile, among growth and value entries from some other stables, this year’s results have been quite contrary. The Fidelity Growth Company Fund is up 4.2 percent and the Fidelity Value Fund is down 1.5 percent. At the Invesco Funds Group in Denver, the Invesco Blue Chip Growth Fund, down 0.5 percent, still has done better than the Invesco Value Equity Fund, which has lost 4.6 percent.

Meanwhile, the track on which the horses run keeps shifting. Yesterday’s growth stock is often today’s deep-value proposition, and vice versa.

The biggest stock in the Vanguard Growth Index Fund, General Electric Co., was a value stock in years gone by (back in the 1970s when the terms growth and value hadn’t yet come into wide use). Plenty of people own the two biggest stocks in Vanguard Value Index, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Citigroup Inc., as growth investments.

In the last two or three years, apparently noticing that growth vs. value wasn’t helping them much, many investors have tried to substitute a new system of classification “New Economy” and “Old Economy.”

Subjected to the test of real-world experience, that too looks like a distinction without a difference. Some old companies are making out quite nicely on the Internet, while quite a few dot-com enterprises are gasping for air.

This doesn’t prevent any investor from finding stock funds that complement each other. Look beyond the label to the manager’s operating philosophy and specific investments.

Try to find well-managed funds with little or no duplication among their favorite industries and 10 largest individual holdings. Then compare the charts of their past performances to see how much they coincide or diverge.

That kind of research should improve your chances of getting both growth and value in your fund investments, rather than trying to make some hair-splitting choice between the two.

Chet Currier is a columnist for Bloomberg News.