We all know what a euphemism is.  It's a word used to sound pleasant to describe something unpleasant.

A dysphemism is the opposite:  a word chosen because it deliberately sounds bad.

Elon Musk's recent problematic statement of "My son is dead, the woke mind virus killed him" got me thinking about the appropriateness of dysphemisms.

For those of you unaware, all of Elon Musk's children are alive, one of them recently transitioned to female.  This was the person Mr. Musk incorrectly described as his "dead son".

The logic Mr. Musk used to justify this classification was that the trans community uses the phrase "dead name" for a reason, and that by that logic, it was appropriate to say that the son he originally had was dead.

Here, we all know that's incorrect logic, and that nobody actually died in that story.  However, it does prompt the question of whether it's appropriate to use the dysphemism "dead name" as opposed to the more conventional "birth name."  At what point is it immoral to choose a word meant to make something sound worse than it is?  Presumably, it's less problematic when the word choice is meant more for comedic effect than as a moral judgement (such as referring to a dentist's chair as "the electric chair.")

Thoughts?