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Is there a word for an intentional misnomer?

English Language & Usage Asked on August 14, 2021

Is there a word that describes that something has been named “incorrectly” on purpose (a sort of intentional misnomer)? For example, calling someone who is very tall Shorty (or something to that effect).

3 Answers

How about malicious malapropism?

[While a malapropism is usually unintentional, the adjective suggests the deliberate twist.]

Correct answer by bib on August 14, 2021

If the intentional misnomer disparages something positive (as, arguably, calling a tall person Shorty does), it qualifies as a dysphemism. From The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992):

DYSPHEMISM In rhetoric, the use of a negative or disparaging expression to describe something or someone, such as calling a Rolls-Royce a jalopy. A cruel or offensive dysphemism is a cacophemism.

Another candidate (though not quite so apt) from the same source is meiosis:

MEIOSIS In rhetoric, a kind of understatement that dismisses or belittles, especially by using terms that make something seem less significant than it really is or ought to be: for example, calling a serious wound a scratch, or a journalist a hack or a scribbler.

Answered by Sven Yargs on August 14, 2021

Antiphrasis! Sometimes conflated with litotes.

Antiphrasis

the usually ironic or humorous use of words in senses opposite to the generally accepted meanings (as in "this giant of 3 feet 4 inches")

[Merriam Webster]

Answered by Emily on August 14, 2021

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