Engineer vs. Inspector — 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").

Inspector is both a police rank and an administrative position, both used in a number of contexts. However, it is not an equivalent rank in each police force.

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

One who is appointed or employed to inspect something.

One who operates an engine.

A police officer ranking next below superintendent.

One who skillfully or shrewdly manages an enterprise.

A person employed to inspect something.

To plan, construct, or manage as an engineer.

(law enforcement) A police officer ranking below superintendent.

To alter or produce by methods of genetic engineering

(computing) A software tool used to examine something.

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

One who inspects, views, or oversees; one to whom the supervision of any work is committed; one who makes an official view or examination, as a military or civil officer; a superintendent; a supervisor; an overseer.

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

A police officer, typically holding a rank one below superintendent, and in some cases in charge of several precincts; as, inspector Clousseau is investigating the case.

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

A high ranking police officer

(by extension)

An investigator who observes carefully;

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.

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 person trained to operate an engine; an engineman.

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

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

(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);