pixilated

English

Etymology

From pixie, with ending as in titillated.

Adjective

pixilated (comparative more pixilated, superlative most pixilated)

1. Behaving in an eccentric manner, as though led by pixies.
   • 1936, Robert Riskin, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Film):

     Jane Faulkner: They think he's pixilated.
     Amy Faulkner: Oh, yes. Pixilated. […]
     Board member: Perhaps I can explain, your honor. The word "pixilated" is an early American expression derived from the word "pixies", meaning elves. They would say the pixies had got him. As we nowadays would say, a man is "barmy".

2. Whimsical.
   • 1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 107:

     Gremlinesque behaviour might not be very obvious to an America, who would accept as perfectly natural the quaintly pixilated sayings and doings that are happening in subways, in trolleys, on buses, in bars at all times of the day and night.

3. Drunk.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:drunk

   • 1960, Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water, London: Longmans, →OL, page 5:

     The melancholy beauty of Strachur and Inveraray was for me complicated by the agonies of first love; I was well and truly pixilated, and I soaked myself in the works of Niel Munroe and Maurice Walsh...

Usage notes

• Do not confuse pixilated with pixelated.

Synonyms

• (eccentric): abnormal, eccentric, eccentrical, excentrical, odd
• (whimsical): idiosyncratic, outlandish, peculiar, playful, quirky, unconventional