Pilot

How to spell pilot

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pilot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pilot mean?

1. nounA person who operates the flying controls of an aircraft.
2. verbTo guide, steer, or direct something such as a vessel, vehicle, or project.
3. adjectiveDone as a small-scale test before a wider rollout.
4. nounThe first trial episode of a television series, made to test its appeal.

Pilot in a sentence

• noun

  The pilot announced a short delay before take-off.

• verb

  She will pilot the ferry through the narrow channel at dawn.

• adjective

  The council ran a pilot scheme on three streets before extending it.

• noun

  The network ordered a full season after the pilot drew strong ratings.

• noun

  Every commercial pilot must log many hours of training.

• verb

  The manager was asked to pilot the new scheme to completion.

Where does pilot come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word arrived in English in the 1500s from the French pilote, which French had taken from the Italian pilota. The Italian form developed from an earlier pedota, traced back to the Greek pedon, meaning the blade of an oar, and the related plural peda, meaning the steering oars or rudder of a ship. So at its root a pilot was literally the person who handled the steering gear and guided a vessel safely into harbour. For centuries the word referred only to ships, and the sense of guiding an aircraft did not appear until the early 1900s when aviation began. The same nautical idea of steering survives in the figurative verb, to pilot a project through difficulties, and the single l and single t make the spelling simpler than its many meanings suggest.

How the word is built

• pilot (from Italian pilota, a steersman) used whole, with no English prefix or suffix