It doesn't matter what word you use, what matters is the nature of that which you are using this word to refer to. Traditionally this word has been used to refer to either A) Invalid/contradictory hypothesis or B) A rehashing of the corpuscular hypothesis.
The author at the site describes the aether thus:
In order to keep things simple, one should postulate that the aether is perfectly homogeneous and that it preserves energy without any loss. Then it would transmit sinusoidal waves whose speed c is constant.
The keyword here is "homogeneous". The common definition(s):
homogeneous:
1. composed of parts or elements that are all of the same kind
2. of the same kind or nature; essentially alike.
The first definition refers to a collection of objects (parts or elements). If the aether is just a collection of identical objects then it is just a bunch of discrete particles, unless these objects are physically connected (which has not been stated). Particles just bounce off each other (diverge). There is no such thing as the force of pull with discrete particles. The aether hypothesis has never stated that objects are physically connected.
The other way "aether" has been used is as a "continuous medium". A continuous object, however, cannot deform. If it's continuous there is nowhere within it for anything to move! This is the invalid hypothesis (because it proposes something that cannot deform can deform).
This is why the aether hypothesis is dead. We need a new hypothesis, a rope/chain hypothesis in which every object in the universe is physically connected to every other object. This explains
physically why light travels rectilinear and why bodies appear to attract each other "at a distance" (gravitation).
The author sums up the problem with the aether hypothesis:
This site does not explain how the aether works mechanically.
By "mechanically" he means "physically". The aether is a nonphysical hypothesis. All the author has done in this article is say "there must be some way for light to propagate, you cannot have a wave without something waving". This is not a hypothesis! It's repeating the definition of a wave! A wave is *defined* as some
thing moving in a particular manner.
The chain-rope hypothesis solves this problem by actually posing a new physical mechanism beyond the particle. The traditional aether is dead.