I can call a bicycle an gyroscopically-stabilized carbon-neutral human transportation device but that doesn't somehow make it fancier. It just sounds fancier.

I can call a bicycle an gyroscopically-stabilized carbon-neutral human transportation device but that doesn't somehow make it fancier. It just sounds fancier. I have argued that when people hear the word "autopilot" they think that it's very advanced. You argue that technically, something that just keeps the wings level is also an autopilot. I agree! I just disagree that the average person would know enough about the finer points of what a particular word actually means versus what just about everyone thinks it means. Finally I would argue that if just about everyone thinks that a word means a particular thing, that's what it means. It might technically be incorrect, but words are just noises that people say to convey an idea from one brain to another. If you know what someone meant well enough to correct them, they probably used the word correctly. Here's a major news website reporting on what an autopilot is and is not in the wake of the germanwings crash about a year ago. It maintains that autopilots on commercial jets (what people tend to think of when you say "airplane" or "flight"). This was the 3rd or 4th google hit for the phrase "what is an autopilot" http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can-and-cant-do.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can...