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Flat Earthers will cherry pick and twist definitions to ‘prove’ that the Earth is flat. Here is a list of words and phrases they use in this way, together with the actual definition.
Level has many meaning as a noun, a verb, and as an adjective. For flerfs however, level has just one meaning: Flat. Any talk about ‘levelling a theodolite’ or ‘sea level’ is taken as an admission that the Earth is flat.
Of course, context is everything. In the context of surveyors measuring the shape of the Earth, the relevant meaning is
Adjective… having no part higher than another : conforming to the curvature of the liquid parts of the earth’s surface.
Then there are surveyors text books:
A horizontal plane is perpendicular to the plumb line at a point but a level surface is at all points perpendicular to the local plumb line. The two surfaces are coincident at the instrument station but diverge with increasing distance from it due to the earth’s curvature. Hence there is a technical difference between a horizontal distance (HD) and a level difference (LD)…
If level means flat, then sea level means the sea is flat and does not curve.
Another word for flat, according to flerfs.
Surveying instruments such as the theodolite, or navigation instruments such as the sextant, use a horizontal plane for their use, Therefore the Earth is ‘measured flat’. End of story.