Mind your language | 13 May 2006

This year we celebrate the centenary of the coining of the word aeroplanist. It meant the driver of a flying-machine, a device that had been invented three years earlier. After two decades of struggle, aeroplanist gave way to pilot, which in this sense arrived in 1907. Interestingly enough, sky-pilot, meaning a clergyman, predates the invention of heavier-than-air flight. The first recorded use of sky-pilot is in this very magazine, in the issue of 30 December 1893.
Another aerial usage from 1906 that failed to fly was aerodyne, which seemed at first more stylish than flying-machine. The word that settled down as the English for the Wright brothers’ invention was aeroplane. This had been in use technically since the 1870s, but its future was gradually undermined by the slangy plane, which emerged in 1908. Americans generally preferred airplane, introduced in 1907. The neutral term aircraft, in use from 1850, was at first used to refer to balloons, and still has the advantage of including helicopters.
Neologisms