• Question: Does engineering come from the word engine?

    Asked by 316enec44 to Hilly, Lee, Liz, Tadhg, Yasmin on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Yasmin Ali

      Yasmin Ali answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      Engineering comes from an even better word!! It comes from the Latin ‘ingenium’ which means cleverness and ‘ingeniare’ which means to devise or make. I like to think it comes from the same place as the word genius :).

    • Photo: Lee Margetts

      Lee Margetts answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      @316enec44 – I think its the other way around. The word engine probably comes from the word engineering. Engineering comes from the Latin word ingenium, meaning “cleverness” 🙂

    • Photo: David Hill

      David Hill answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      The guys have beat me to it!

      Engineering is amazing, have a look into the history of engineering yourself… some of the things that engineers did years ago that were revolutionary… that today we take for granted! Totally just distracted me from work for 10 minutes!

      Some of the most awesome engineering has taken place during wartime… when money been invested in technology (look at NASA during the cold war for example!) But even further back, looking at the development of catapults and siege weapons! Its sometimes hard to realise how massive the project your working on at the moment is, but when you realise the impact of engineering its awesome…

      I’ve went a bit of track here.. but I had fun doing it, so I make no apologies! 🙂

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