pilot

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
pilot/ˈpʌɪlət/

▶noun

• 1 a person who operates the flying controls of an aircraft.

• 2 a person with expert local knowledge qualified to take charge of a ship entering or leaving a harbour.

  ■ archaic a guide or leader.

• 3 [often as modifier] something done or produced as an experiment or test before wider introduction: a pilot scheme.

• 4 Telecommunications an unmodulated reference signal transmitted with another signal for the purposes of control or synchronization.

▶verb (pilots, piloting, piloted)

• 1 act as a pilot of (an aircraft or ship).

  ■ guide; steer.

• 2 test (a scheme, project, etc.) before introducing it more widely.

– derivatives
pilotage noun,
pilotless adjective.

– origin C16: from Fr. pilote, from med. L. pilotus, based on Gk pēdon ‘oar’, (pl.) ‘rudder’.