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PlainSpell

pixelate

/ˈpɪksəleɪt/verb

pixelate is spelled P-I-X-E-L-A-T-E. The wrong spelling people search most is pixilate: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Pixelate is a verb meaning “To divide an image into pixels, or to display an image in pixels”.

How many letters and syllables are in pixelate?

Letters8: P-I-X-E-L-A-T-E
In writingabout once in every 48 million words; the 214,628th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, pixilate, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell pixelate?

Pixelate is spelled P-I-X-E-L-A-T-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for pixelate in either form.

pixelatethe right spelling130 searches a month
pixilatei in place of e30 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is pixelate?

Pixelate appears about once in every 48 million words in written English, the 214,628th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce pixelate?

  • /ˈpɪksəleɪt/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-pixelate.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of pixelate

  • pixelates present, singular, he/she/it
  • pixelating participle, present
  • pixelated participle, past
  • pixellate

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does pixelate mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

verb

  1. 1

    To divide an image into pixels, or to display an image in pixels.

  2. 2

    To transform an image (or a portion thereof) into large pixels, especially in order to hide details.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Pixelate in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Germanpixeln (divide an image into pixels), verpixeln (transform an image into large pixels)
Portuguesepixelizar (divide an image into pixels)
Spanishpixelar (divide an image into pixels)
Frenchpixelliser, pixéliser, pixeliser (transform an image into large pixels)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does pixelate come from?

From pixel + -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after pixelate