For what it's worth, in my language the motion of birds and the motion of aircraft _are_ two different words.

> A plane is not a fly and does not stay aloft like a fly, yet we describe what it does as flying despite the fact that it does not flap its wings.

Flying doesn't mean flapping, and the word has a long history of being used to describe inanimate objects moving through the air.

"A rock flies through the window, shattering it and spilling shards everywhere" - see?

OTOH, we have never used to word "swim" in the same way - "The rock hit the surface and swam to the bottom" is wrong!

Flying isn’t named after flies, they both come from the same root.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fly

I was riffing on that famous Dijkstra quote.