'anti-aliasing' originates from English, specifically formed by the prefix 'anti-' (from Greek anti- meaning 'against') and the noun 'aliasing' (from 'alias' + -ing), where 'alias' ultimately comes from Latin 'alias' meaning 'at another time' / 'otherwise' and in technical use denotes a false or spurious representation.

'alias' entered English from Latin 'alias'; in 20th-century signal-processing and sampling theory the verb/noun 'alias/aliasing' was coined to describe spurious signals or false frequency components created by undersampling. The compound 'anti-aliasing' developed afterward to name methods that prevent or reduce such artifacts and was adopted into computer graphics and digital signal processing.

Initially a descriptive term for countermeasures 'against aliasing' in signal theory, it evolved into a technical noun widely used in graphics and audio to refer specifically to algorithms and filters that reduce jagged edges or sampling artifacts.