engineer

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering.
2. n. One who operates an engine.
3. n. One who skillfully or shrewdly manages an enterprise.
4. v. To plan, construct, or manage as an engineer.
5. v. To alter or produce by methods of genetic engineering: "Researchers . . . compared insulin manufactured by bacteria genetically engineered with recombinant DNA techniques to the commercial insulin obtained from swine or cattle” ( Fusion).
6. v. To plan, manage, and put through by skillful acts or contrivance; maneuver.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A person skilled in the principles and practice of any department of engineering. Engineers are classified, according to the particular business pursued by them, as military, naval or marine, civil, mining, and mechanical or dynamic engineers. (See engineering.) In the United States navy engineers are classed as follows: Engineer in chief, ranking with a commodore and having charge of the Bureau of Steam Engineering at the Navy Department; chief engineers, ranking, according to length of service, with lieutenant-commanders, commanders, or captains; passed assistant engineers, officers who have passed their examination for chief engineer, and who rank with lieutenants; and assistant engineers, who rank with ensigns or lieutenants.
2. n. An engine-driver; one who manages an engine; a person who has charge of an engine and its connected machinery, as on board a steam-vessel.
3. n. One who carries through any scheme or enterprise by skill or artful contrivance; a manager.
4. To plan and direct the formation or carrying out of; direct as an engineer: as, to engineer a canal or a tunnel.
5. To work upon; ply; try some scheme or plan upon.
6. To guide or manage by ingenuity and tact; conduct through or over obstacles by contrivance and effort: as, to engineer a bill through Congress.
7. n. The title of an officer of the corps of civil engineers of the United States Navy. See corps.
8. n. An official grade of governmental engineering officers in some countries, as in France.

Wiktionary

1. n. A person who is qualified or professionally engaged in any branch of engineering.
2. n. A person trained in a natural science that applies such knowledge towards a practical objective.
3. n. A person who, given a practical scientific problem involving the physical world and a specific set of goals and constraints, finds a technical solution to the problem that satisfies those goals within those constraints. The goals and constraints may be technical, social, or business related.
4. n. A person who operates an engine (such as a locomotive).
5. v. transitive To design, construct or manage something as an engineer.
6. v. transitive To alter or construct something by means of genetic engineering.
7. v. transitive To plan or achieve some goal by contrivance or guile; to wangle or finagle.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A person skilled in the principles and practice of any branch of engineering. See under engineering, n.
2. n. One who manages as engine, particularly a steam engine; an engine driver.
3. n. colloq. One who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance; an efficient manager.
4. v. To lay out or construct, as an engineer; to perform the work of an engineer on.
5. v. colloq. To use contrivance and effort for; to guide the course of; to manage.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. design as an engineer
2. n. the operator of a railway locomotive
3. n. a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems
4. v. plan and direct (a complex undertaking)