I've been reading "The DaVinci Code" (damn good book) and there was a
paragraph about a biblical character named Pilot. That got me curious about
the etymology of the word "Pilot." I wondered if there were some relation
to the title we carry and the bible character. There isn't. But what I did
find was interesting and I thought I'd sha

"PILOT" ETYMOLOGY: Obsolete French, helmsman, from Old French, from Old
Italian "pilota" alteration of "pedota", from Medieval Greek "*pdts", from
Greek "pda", steering oar, pl. of "pdon", blade of an oar.

WORD HISTORY: The pilot of an aircraft speeding through the air and the
pilot of a watercraft plowing through the water both drag an etymological
foot on the ground. Surprisingly enough, considering its modern contexts,
the English word pilot can be traced back to the Indo-European root *ped-,
meaning "foot." From the lengthened-grade suffixed form *pdo- came the Greek
word pdon, "blade of an oar," and in the plural, "steering oar." In Medieval
Greek there is assumed to have existed the derivative *pdts, "steersman,"
which passed into Old Italian and acquired several forms, including pedota,
and pilota, the form that was borrowed into Old French as pilot. English
borrowed the word from French, and as pilot it has moved from the water to
the air, first being recorded in 1848 with reference to an airborne pilot-a
balloonist.

From another source: "Originally "one who steers a ship;" sense extended
1848 to "one who controls a balloon," and 1907 to "one who flies an
airplane."