pilot light

Questions about pilot light

What does pilot light mean?

pilot light means "small auxiliary gas burner that provides a flame to ignite a larger gas burner". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for pilot light?

Close synonyms include pilot burner, pilot, pilot lamp, indicator lamp. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is pilot light a common word?

pilot light is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.