piloto

Forms

piloto m or f by sense (plural pilotos, feminine piloto or pilota, feminine plural pilotos or pilotas)^[1]

Etymology

It is probably borrowed from Italian pilota, earlier also piloto, which comes from Byzantine Greek *πηδώτης (*pēdṓtēs, “helmsman”), a derivative of Ancient Greek πηδόν (pēdón, “oar blade; rudder”).^[2][3][4][1] The DLE takes the Spanish word from the Italian form in -o, now obsolete.^[4]

In Italy the word is found in a Latin document of Genoa of 1282 and in a Romance one of 1397, both with the ending -o;^[2] the form in -a is also old and, according to Corominas, the more classical form.^[2] Forms with -d-, pedotta and pedotto, occur from the 13th and early 14th centuries.^[2][5] Nocentini traces them to Venetian pedota with the influence of piede (“foot”), and notes that the form with -l- is attested in Genoa from the 13th century.^[6] From Italy the word spread to French pilote, Spanish and the neighbouring languages; Portuguese pilloto is recorded in a letter of King Afonso V, and Catalan pilot already in the Catalan sea code, the Consolat de Mar.^[2][6]

Some scholars, Maver among them, took the word instead as an Italian derivative of the word for “foot”, a “guide on foot” on land.^[2] Corominas rejects this: the Greek word is unrecorded, but Byzantine naval vocabulary is poorly known, derivatives in -ώτης (-ṓtēs) are frequent, and endings like -ota and -oto are not Italian suffixes.^[2] He suggests that Italian /l/ replaced the fricative Greek delta, as in polizza, helped perhaps by Old Italian pileggiare (“to sail”).^[7][1] Bénaben mentions Guiraud's view that the French word is a back-formation from a Romance verb built on Latin pila (“pillar; pier”).^[8]

The Greek noun meant “blade of an oar” in Homer.^[9] Beekes derives it from a form *pēd-o- (“sole, footstep”), related to the word for “foot”, the flat oar blade being compared to the sole of the foot.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The CDH's first hit is in Ruy González de Clavijo's account of his embassy to Tamerlane (c. 1406): vn piloto que venja dela çiudat de meçina “a pilot who came from the city of Messina”.^[11][12] Corominas's first record, of the second quarter of the 15th century, is Díaz de Gámez's Victorial: El capitán traýa buenos pilotos sabidores de aquella costa “the captain had good pilots who knew that coast”.^[2][11]

Semantic evolution

From the end of the 15th century the examples become frequent, from Columbus's first voyage to Nebrija's piloto principal “chief pilot”.^[2][13] Covarrubias (1611) describes the pilot as the man who steers the ship with the sea chart and the compass, watching the North Star.^[14] Autoridades adds two transferred senses: a heavy drinker who knows his wines, and the clever manager of any business.^[15] In thieves' cant a piloto was the thief who went ahead to guide the others, a sense in the Academy's dictionary by 1817.^[16]

The Academy's 1899 edition derived the word from Dutch piloot “sounding lead”, and Alemany (1917) gave the Italian etymology and the first sense for the driver of a car, a balloon or an aeroplane.^[17][18] Later editions added the indicator light of an appliance and the use in apposition for something experimental (piso piloto “show flat”).^[19][20]

In the Southern Cone and Bolivia a piloto is a raincoat; in Venezuela the manager of a baseball team; on the Panama Canal the pilot who takes ships from one ocean to the other.^[21][1] It also names a bird in Chile and Ecuador and a fish in Cuba.^[21][22][23] Tagalog borrowed the word as piloto.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1406 – Clavijo's Historia del gran Tamorlán, the CDH's first hit.^[11]
• 1431–1449 – Díaz de Gámez's Victorial, Corominas's first record.^[2][11]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records piloto principal.^[13]
• 1508 – first record of the derivative pilotaje.^[7]
• 1534 – first record from the Americas, in Peru.^[24]
• 1611 – Covarrubias describes the pilot's work with chart and compass.^[14]
• 1726–1739 – Autoridades adds the senses “heavy drinker” and “manager”.^[15]
• 1817 – the cant sense “thief who guides the others” in the Academy's dictionary.^[16]
• 1884 – the compound pailebote, from English pilot's boat, enters the Academy's dictionary.^[7]
• 1917 – Alemany records the driver of a car, a balloon or an aeroplane.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who steers and directs a ship; a pilot.^[4][1]
2. The second officer of a merchant ship (buque mercante).^[4]
3. A person who drives a car, a balloon or an aircraft; a racing driver.^[4][1]
4. A person who guides or advises in any matter.^[4]
5. An indicator light showing that an appliance or installation is working: Se encendió el piloto de la batería.^[4][1]
6. A device with a small flame that lights a burner when it is turned on; a pilot light.^[4]
7. (in apposition) Serving as a model or as an experiment: proyecto piloto.^[19][20]
8. (Bolivia, Southern Cone) A raincoat.^[21][1]
9. (Venezuela) The manager of a baseball (béisbol) team.^[21]

Word family

• pilotaje
• autopiloto
• pilotar
• pilotear
• pilotín

Related words

• pailebote
• Italian pilota
• Ancient Greek πηδόν (pēdón)

Usage notes

Piloto automático is the autopilot of a ship or aircraft, also used figuratively, and a piloto de altura was one able to navigate on the open sea by the stars.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 544
3. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. piloto
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. piloto
5. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli, p. s.v. pilota
6. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. pilota
7. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 4, 545
8. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. piloto
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. πηδόν
10. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. piloto
12. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. piloto
13. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. piloto
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1214
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 272
16. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 675
17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 780
18. ^ a b Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1318
19. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. piloto
20. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. piloto
21. ^ a b c d Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. piloto
22. ^ Lemos R., Gustavo (1920–1922), Semántica o ensayo de lexicografía ecuatoriana, Guayaquil, with Suplemento (1922), p. 1, 159
23. ^ Suárez, Constantino (1921), Vocabulario cubano, La Habana: Librería Cervantes / Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, p. 417
24. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. piloto