What does antialiasing mean?
Antialiasing is a noun denoting a family of techniques used in computer graphics and digital imaging to eliminate the jagged, stair-step appearance—colloquially called 'jaggies'—that occurs when curved or diagonal lines are drawn on a grid of square pixels. Because a screen can only display discrete dots of color, edges that should be smooth end up looking blocky; antialiasing corrects this by blending the colors of pixels along an edge with those of neighboring pixels, producing the illusion of a smoother line at normal viewing distance. The term derives from 'aliasing', the underlying distortion it counteracts, which itself comes from signal processing, where undersampled signals create false frequencies known as aliases. Antialiasing appears constantly in discussions of video games, 3D rendering, font rendering, and image rescaling, and it carries no emotional connotation—it is purely descriptive and technical. Understanding the word helps anyone reading graphics settings menus, hardware reviews, or software documentation make sense of a ubiquitous but often invisible piece of modern display technology.
nounA technique in computer graphics that smooths the jagged, stair-step edges (known as 'jaggies') of curved or diagonal lines by blending the colors of edge pixels with their surroundings.
- In computer graphics and image processing: any technique that reduces the jagged, stair-step artifacts ('jaggies') along the edges of rendered shapes by blending pixel colors at boundaries.
"The game's crisp edges were the result of aggressive antialiasing applied at render time."
"Turning on antialiasing made the wireframe model look far smoother on screen."
"The printer driver applies antialiasing to text so small fonts remain legible."
Every smooth curve you see on a screen is a small lie: antialiasing works by deliberately blurring pixels so your eye perceives sharpness.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of antialiasing
Antialiasing is formed from the prefix 'anti-' (Greek in origin, meaning 'against') combined with 'aliasing', a term from signal processing. 'Alias' comes from Latin 'alius', meaning 'other' or 'another', via the notion of a false or alternative identity—in signal processing, an alias is a spurious frequency created when a signal is sampled too slowly. As computer graphics developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, engineers borrowed the term to describe the jagged artifacts produced by raster displays, and 'antialiasing' naturally emerged as the name for techniques that suppress them. Cognates sharing the same Latin root include 'alias' itself and its derived forms such as 'aliased'.
Related word forms
How antialiasing is actually used
Antialiasing is a technical term used almost exclusively in computing, graphics, digital imaging, and audio engineering contexts. It is typically an uncountable noun referring to the technique or process rather than a countable object. In casual speech among gamers and designers it is often shortened informally, but the full form remains standard in technical documentation. The word is spelled with the American-style 'antialiasing' in most technical literature; British usage also favors this spelling over 'anti-aliasing', though both appear.
Easily confused with antialiasing
Aliasing is the visual distortion itself — jagged or stair-stepped edges caused by undersampling — while antialiasing is the corrective technique used to reduce or eliminate it.