DAS is probably shorter than anything most people could come up with to describe the style. Do you think your own description: 'pushing the D pad direction you want the piece to go, then letting go when it gets there' is a better way to communicate?

Almost any sufficiently advanced community will develop jargon that those outside it find confusing or lackluster.

It's not even a 'style' though, is it? It's just using the controls as designed.

Hyperclicking I get - it's pushing the button faster than the inbuilt repeat rate. DAS seems to just be.. what people must have been doing before hyper clicking got invented? Were people calling it DAS before hyper clicking became a thing? Or was it a retronym introduced to describe the disadvantages of that technique compared to hyper clicking?

The latter, and that happens all the time. I didn't hear ICE vehicle until EV was really on the scene.

Analog clock

Snail Mail

DAS was basically a name people came up for to describe how keyboards repeat keys. Initial keystroke, a short delay, then repeated presses afterwards.

Well, considering Windows and MacOS have system settings to tune this (key repeat rate and key repeat delay), and considering the modern Tetris innovations are about how you can physically press a button faster, it doesn't seem that strange.

The selling point isn't being "technical". It's the 20x reduction in syllables.