Tone-deaf, in the figurative sense, refers to saying something without considering how it will land with your audience:
Wishing your vegetarian colleagues in Mumbai "Happy Turkey Day!" came off as a little tone-deaf.
However, in these politically correct times, the expression may cause offence to people with actual hearing loss and is apparently best avoided. Is there a good alternative that would work in the phrase above? (Words or short phrases are both fine.)
A couple of synonym sites I consulted were not very helpful: synonym.com offers "deaf" as a synonym (uh, no), Wiktionary offers "out of touch" (better, but not quite?) and most other major thesauruses don't seem to have it.
And a final vain plea: let's please try to avoid the discussion of whether this expression actually is or "should" be considered non-PC.
Best Answer
It’s insensitive. See for example these headlines: