Engineer vs. Specialist — What's the Difference?

Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost. The word engineer (Latin ingeniator) is derived from the Latin words ingeniare ("to create, generate, contrive, devise") and ingenium ("cleverness").

A person who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity; a person highly skilled in a specific and restricted field

One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering.

Possessing or involving detailed knowledge or study of a restricted topic

One who operates an engine.

One who is devoted to a particular occupation or branch of study or research

One who skillfully or shrewdly manages an enterprise.

A physician whose practice is limited to a particular branch of medicine or surgery, especially one who is certified by a board of physicians

To plan, construct, or manage as an engineer.

Any of several noncommissioned ranks in the US Army that correspond to that of corporal through sergeant first class.

To alter or produce by methods of genetic engineering

A species with narrow habitat or food requirements

To plan, manage, and bring about by skillful acts or contrivance

(British) Specialised, involving detailed knowledge of a restricted topic.

A soldier engaged in designing or constructing military works for attack or defence, or other engineering works.

Someone who is an expert in, or devoted to, some specific branch of study or research.

(obsolete) A soldier in charge of operating a weapon; an artilleryman, a gunner.

(medicine) A physician whose practice is limited to a particular branch of medicine or surgery.

(by extension)

Any of several non-commissioned ranks corresponding to that of corporal.

A person professionally engaged in the technical design and construction of large-scale private and public works such as bridges, buildings, harbours, railways, roads, etc.; a civil engineer.

An organism that is specialized for a particular environment.

Originally, a person engaged in designing, constructing, or maintaining engines or machinery; now (more generally), a person qualified or professionally engaged in any branch of engineering, or studying to do so.

A stenotopic species.

A person trained to operate an engine; an engineman.

One who devotes himself to some specialty; as, a medical specialist, one who devotes himself to diseases of particular parts of the body, as the eye, the ear, the nerves, etc.

Preceded by a qualifying word: a person who uses abilities or knowledge to manipulate events or people.

An expert who is devoted to one occupation or branch of learning

A person who formulates plots or schemes; a plotter, a schemer.

Practices one branch of medicine

(transitive)

To employ one's abilities and knowledge as an engineer to design, construct, and/or maintain (something, such as a machine or a structure), usually for industrial or public use.

(specifically) To use genetic engineering to alter or construct (a DNA sequence), or to alter (an organism).

To plan or achieve (a goal) by contrivance or guile; to finagle, to wangle.

(intransitive)

To formulate plots or schemes; to plot, to scheme.

(rare) To work as an engineer.

One who manages as engine, particularly a steam engine; an engine driver.

One who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance; an efficient manager.

To lay out or construct, as an engineer; to perform the work of an engineer on; as, to engineer a road.

To use contrivance and effort for; to guide the course of; to manage; as, to engineer a bill through Congress.

A person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

The operator of a railway locomotive

Design as an engineer;

Plan and direct (a complex undertaking);