Autopilot

How to spell autopilot

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce autopilot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does autopilot mean?

1. nounA system that automatically controls the course of an aircraft, ship, or vehicle without constant human input.
2. nounA state of acting routinely or mechanically, with little conscious thought or attention.

Autopilot in a sentence

• The captain switched on the autopilot once the plane reached cruising altitude.

• After years on the same commute, she drives the route on autopilot.

• A fault in the autopilot forced the crew to fly the aircraft manually.

• When the meeting dragged on, his mind slipped into autopilot and he missed the question.

Where does autopilot come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is a modern compound that joins the Greek prefix auto-, meaning 'self', to the word pilot. Pilot itself travelled a long road: it traces back through French pilote and Italian pilota to a Medieval Latin form pilotus, which most scholars connect to the Greek pedon, meaning 'steering oar' or 'rudder', and the related plural ped\u014d for the blades that steer a ship. For centuries a pilot was simply the person who steered a vessel, and only in the twentieth century did the sense widen to someone who flies an aircraft. The compound autopilot was coined in the 1930s for the mechanical and electronic systems that keep an aeroplane on course without a human at the controls, literally a 'self-steerer'. From aviation it spread into everyday speech for the state of doing routine tasks without conscious thought, and the spelling stays regular because it is just auto plus pilot with no joining vowel changed.

How the word is built

• auto- (self, from Greek autos)
• pilot (one who steers, from Greek pedon: steering oar)