Why use a word in place of its numerous synonyms? Word choice is largely dictated by common usage as well as the willingness of the writer/speaker to diverge from convention and choose a lesser-used word at the possible risk of drawing a portion of the audience’s attention away from the point or message being conveyed. The vocabulary and habit of the writer/speaker are also influences that need no explanation.
While these influences are rooted in biochemistry, the separation between the worlds of linguistics and biology is evinced by the use it or lose it principle being applicable to the muscle and mind but not to words, excepting conjunctions, which are the connective tissue of sentences. Conjunctions aside, the strength of a word as a function of time is threatened in two ways: frequency of use and outright replacement by euphemism. The latter arguably doesn’t threaten a word’s strength per se, but rather renders obsolete any consideration of its strength. Fortuitously, these two threats are in opposition, meaning a given word will not succumb to both simultaneously: a word whose frequent usage weakens it is necessarily not being replaced by euphemism, and vice-versa. The case of a word whose opposing threats are in perfect balance, then, is indistinguishable from the case where it is without threat, a circumstance that encourages analogizing with Newton’s 3rd law of motion.
In the event a word’s opposing threats are not in balance, rather than trying to make them so, one’s effort is better applied to introducing a more potent replacement, essentially an anti-euphemism. An anti-euphemism can be classified broadly as being either a wholly new word invented expressly for the purpose or a pre-existing one to which a new definition has been ascribed. There are pros and cons to both strategies. A new definition to an existing word will invariably be viewed through the lens of its existing definitions, which may enhance or diminish the potency of the new way in which the word is used. The inventor of a new word has incredible freedom to devise a combination of letters never used before, yet a new word is necessarily subject to challenges associated with entering the lexicon that do not exist at the same scale for an extant word merely embellished with a new definition.
Regardless of the anti-euphemism strategy employed, adhering to the following constraints will maximize the potential of eclipsing the target word and ensuring its replacement remains lodged in the mind like a barb: phonologically, use no more than 2 syllables; phonetically, stress a long vowel sound.