There are gaggles of geese.
A group of bears is referred to as a sloth of bears.
There are the well-known teams of oxen, hives of bees, and packs of wolves.
We even collectively group people together.
There are companies of actors. Bands of musicians. Regiments of soldiers.
Yet there are no generally well-known listings for Engineers.
Go ahead, look it up. After spending more than a few minutes of research here there is shockingly little in the way of generally agreed upon group nomenclature for some of the finest groups of humans to ever walk this earth.
It is possible to fall back on the possibly indelicate and often scatological urban dictionary which refers to a group of more than three engineers together as:
A wank of engineers.
Look that one up at your own risk.
Yet, jokes regarding this collectively talented group of people abound. It is a well-regarded profession. Why shouldn’t we have some collective nouns to fall back on when we gather?
It isn’t like we take up a lot of space! Haven’t you heard the story about the Engineers taking a train ride?
Once upon a time three physicists and three Engineers found themselves on a train platform heading to a big conference. The physicists watched in confusion as only one Engineer went to the ticket window and purchased a ticket.
After a few minutes, they all started boarding the train. A few minutes later it left and the conductor started collecting tickets. The physicists were amazed to see all three Engineers get up and crowd into the bathroom on the car. As the conductor passed by, he knocked on the bathroom door asking for tickets.
A single arm with a single ticket emerged, whereupon the conductor accepted their ticket and carried on.
If this isn’t an intelligent and space-conserving method for travel, then I don’t know what is.
So what descriptive, yet informative appellation should we place upon these enterprising geniuses?
The following is an attempt to categorize and collectively identify these amazing groups of smart and talented people. As there appear to be no globally recognized official terms for groups of these people, here is my offering to the Engineering Gods describing collective nouns for different branches of Engineering.
What Do You Call A Group Of Chemical Engineers?
We start the collective naming by trying to identify this coagulation of chemical junkies. Dealing with molecules, materials, and moles, chemical engineers convert raw materials into usable stuff that we use and rely on every single day.
Therefore, to honor the grouping of basic elemental units that together form complex and intricate supergroups, chemical engineers are collectively:
A Compound of Engineers
Take one of these groups and stick them in a battery and you have enough juice to move the world.
What Do You Call A Group Of Civil Engineers?
Lend me your roads, rails, and bridges! To the people that start at the bedrock of our society and build the structures and systems that keep us moving, safe, and healthy there are a lot of great possibilities here.
There are a lot of sub-disciplines to this group. We could call them boring for the tunnel engineers. Blueprints cover a bunch of other sub-disciplines, from structural engineers to municipal engineering. It is probably safe skipping over the sewage-based group names for environmental engineers.
However, one name rises to the top here. Or, maybe a more appropriate phrasing would be “settles to the bottom” and represents the core contributions by this group of people. Therefore, a group of Civil Engineers is:
A Foundation of Engineers
It would be remiss of us to not take a moment, or even a second moment to reflect on the shear joy of this conservative force of talented engineers who keep our world running smooth day in and day out.
Although, if you stuff too many Civil Engineers into a room they might end up being decidedly uncivil…
What Do You Call A Group Of Electrical Engineers?
There is a lot of potential for this group! The sparkies are lining up for this one. The term node might work here but then there would forever be arguments over the select few that want to be called supernodes, so that one is out.
Even the Simpsons contributed a worthy contender as the local baseball team is called the isotopes.
However, before we short circuit on names here, let’s charge things up with the name of a group of Electrical Engineers:
A Plug of Engineers
This one is more for the rest of the world than it is for the actual group, and it reflects some of the most basic tenants in computing, electronics, and electrical systems:
Is it plugged in?
And
Did you unplug it and then plug it back in?
A good group name provides easy context for the uninitiated and for those in the group itself. Besides, at the end of the day, aren’t we all just plugging things in?
What Do You Call A Group Of Mechanical Engineers?
This one is tough. A bearing of engineers sounds good and so does a tolerance of engineers. There are cars, trains, and planes here as well as motors, thermodynamics, and robotics.
However, as this group deals with mechanical motion in much of the work done and the ubiquitous symbol for this
A Gearing of Engineers
Let’s hope that any of these groups mesh together to form a constructive and cooperating machine. Besides, unlike the motors that they design and build, this collective group usually has an output higher than the sum of the individual parts.
What Do You Call A Group Of Software Engineers?
This is a tough one. It seems like it should be easy as Software Engineering contains a great many concepts related to gathering together a group of something. Arrays, collections, blocks, and many other concepts define concept groupings in this branch of Engineering. There is one name that stands out from the rest:
A Stack of Engineers
However, the concept of a stack wins out here. This term has grown to be rather large and wide-ranging in software development. It encompasses different ideas based on the context. It can define a data structure. It also can describe the collective technologies that make up the different components of a solution. One of the most famous sources for software development knowledge is known as Stack Exchange.
So this is a great collective noun to represent this group of industrious and enterprising wrangles of the 1s and 0s of our world. All hail the stacks.
What Do You Call A Group Of Applied Engineers?
This group of people deals with Applied Engineering. According to Wikipedia, they deal with “Automation/control systems/mechatronics/robotics“. Therefore, they get one of the best group names on here. A group of Applied Engineers is:
A Goldberg of Engineers
For the uninitiated, this is a reference to the wonderful Rube Goldberg who is known for creating cartoons with overly complex and intricate machines designed to only complete simple tasks.
As for the three engineers on the train? Their story didn’t end after their single ticket was punched.
After an informative and successful conference, the Engineers and physicists again found themselves on a train platform ready to board a train for the ride home.
The physicists, feeling like they were at least equal to the Engineers, proceeded to send a member up to the window to purchase only a single ticket.
However, to the consternation and confusion of the physicists, the Engineers did not purchase any tickets and remained quietly to the side, watching the actions of the three physicists.
This confusion only grew after boarding, as when the train started both the Engineers and physicists crowded into bathrooms on the train car.
It was only after everyone was settled in their cramped quarters that an Engineer emerged from their bathroom to walk over to the other bathroom, knock quietly on the door and ask:
“Tickets please!“
Thanks for reading!
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