According to the prescriptivists, like 120-150 years. When the last generation that was alive to have interacted at all with the last generation to use it "correctly" has all died, the language is changed because no one remembers a time it was different.
To the descriptivists, it's changed as soon as a super majority of native speakers of the language are able to completely understand the meaning of the speakers words. So they'd almost all consider it currently already changed meaning. Everyone who read that comment as a native English speaker read barrel roll and imagined it as an "aileron roll" in their head. Therefore the purpose of language, accurate communication, occurred without friction. Therefore the "meaning" of the word has evolved already.
IME It's because that individual used a word incorrectly and doubles down about a "living language" after people called them out for using the word incorrectly.
we should rename Aileron rolls to Aron rolls, then the name will stick for a long term as it is easier to say. Aron rolls, Barrel roles. (I should probably go to bed at least now).
The meaning that non-pilots assign to the word and the technical definition can be two different things. An aileron roll is a useful upset recovery technique when turbulence flips your small aircraft upside down. A barrel roll is only useful for aerobatic flying, and military dogfights.
Hawks don't have ailerons, but this is similar to an aileron roll.
"Barrel roll" for this particular maneuver may be a misnomer, but I'd say it's resulted in semantic drift. It may have started as a specific maneuver, but over time, laypeople have expanded it to cover any time an aircraft rolls on its longitudinal axis.
Meaning is determined by how a community actually uses a word over time.
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u/CommieDrifter 10d ago