PixElated vs. PixIlated

Hello there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, it’s good to talk to you. This is Gail from Minden, Nevada.

Welcome, Gail.

Well, I have a word. It’s pixelated.

And my mother used to use it to describe someone who is inebriated.

And I hadn’t heard it really used in many years.

This was in the 50s when I heard it.

And it just didn’t seem to be in common usage.

And lately with the computers and pixels in computers, I noticed pixel is EL and pixelated is IL.

So my question is kind of twofold.

What do you know about my pixelated word?

And is pixelated with computers a word?

And where does pixel come from?

Yeah, that distinction could be very significant, couldn’t it?

Although I imagine the contexts are very different.

Although I guess you could be pixelated at a computer conference and take on both meetings.

I don’t know.

Well, I know it was kind of a funny play on words as far as I was concerned,

But I didn’t know whether there was any backing to the play on words.

Yeah, did you run across it recently?

What brought this to mind?

You said your mother used it back in the day, but what about now?

It’s kind of an odd story.

I like graveyards to me in an odd way.

They’re kind of living history.

And I was looking at a more recent headstone in a graveyard,

And it had a computer-generated pixel image on the headstone embedded,

And it wasn’t a good image. It was kind of very vague.

And the word pixelated came to mind.

And I thought, well, hopefully the deceased isn’t offended.

But, you know, that kind of reminded me of the term.

So anyway.

Okay. Yeah, they are different words.

And you’re right. They differ by one letter.

So the computer term is P-I-X-E-L-A-T-E-D.

And the other one that you said your mother used to mean drunk is P-I-X-I-L-A-T-E-D.

And they are etymologically unrelated.

It is a coincidence.

So let’s talk about the one your mother used, the P-I-X-I-L one.

It is a variant of pixie-led, meaning led by pixies, those fairy-like supernatural beings.

Pixies are said to be troublesome and mischievous.

So if you’re pixie-led, you’re led astray or confused the way that you might behave when you’re drunk.

And it’s an Americanism.

It’s kind of a corruption of a word that’s used in the UK.

And a lot of people who love classic films might remember it from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, a 1936 film.

You’ll still find this on the list of people’s favorite films of all time.

In other words, you might say if someone’s pixelated, the pixies have got them.

Maybe a modern synonym for some of the ways you can use pixelated with the second eye is the more modern flaky.

So it’s not just drunk.

So it’s pretty much kind of out of sorts, confused, not behaving normally, even distracted.

All of these can mean like it’s as if a supernatural power has got a hold of them.

They’re not behaving like a rational being.

Okay, very different.

Yeah.

And then the other word, pixel, is a modern word.

It’s a P-I-X-E-L.

It’s a combination of the word PIX, P-I-X,

Which was a common abbreviation in the tech business or the tech world

And even in the movie industry for picture, P-I-C.

Okay.

It’s a plural.

And then the E-L from elements.

So picture elements as a phrase goes back to the 1920s.

And then pixels comes from the 1960s.

And so something’s pixelated.

We say that means that the pixels are obvious instead of being invisible to the eye, which they should be.

You shouldn’t be able to see the pixels.

You should just see the picture.

So pixelation is something you don’t want, usually, except if it’s digital art and you’re using that as a creative tool.

And pixelated art can be wonderful, but often we don’t want to see the pixels.

We just want to see the image.

What a wonderful match you made between these two words, walking in the graveyard.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, they are like museums to me.

I really enjoy them, especially when you have very old sections.

They are, to me, a living history.

Kind of like words.

Yeah, I like to think about the lives lived.

I do. I really do.

I think about the dates, for example.

What was going on in that year that I see?

Exactly.

What does that name remind me of?

Yeah, certainly there was a life here.

What did they do? How did they live?

What were they like?

Where are their descendants?

What did they leave behind?

It’s kind of wonderful to think about that.

Some of the stones are really art in themselves.

Absolutely.

Old friends you can go back to again and again, right?

Yeah, yeah, really.

Gail, thank you so much for sharing this.

Yeah, thank you for the thoughtful call.

I really appreciate it.

I enjoy your show so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gail.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.