army engineer
1
3.8
- noun
:
ingeniero militar
- They reminded him of army engineers and their minions setting out to build a bridge or the like, their eagerness all out of proportion to the actual worth of the thing they were working on, and the end result would be a whole lot of effort on a job that generally struck Inman as better off left undone.
- army engineer build bridges
Examples
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During the training exercise, army engineers demonstrated their skills by rapidly assembling a temporary bridge.
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Yet, numerous army engineers sat at home, paid but unassigned for political reasons.
Academic text (1991) -
Eventually, Red Army engineers were able to breach the walls and Red troops stormed into the city.
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The monument lists the names of army engineers killed by guerrillas while they were building the road.
Academic text (2003) -
After discussions of various possible approaches, a report by two army engineers, Andrew A. Humphreys and Henry L. Abbott, was received in 1861 as a basis for guiding investment, chiefly by local agencies, in further protection works.
Academic text (1993) -
They and their men crossed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which ran parallel to the Potomac, on a makeshift bridge the army engineers had thrown across at a lock.
Fiction book (1992) -
Army engineers construct essential infrastructure, like bridges and roads, to support military operations.
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The army engineer designed a robust fortification to protect the base from potential attacks.
Synonyms
1
4.4
A person in the armed forces who builds, fixes, and destroys army bridges and defenses
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'army' (military force) with 'engineer' (skilled technical professional); a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer a military engineer who performs construction and technical duties. This noun + noun composition is a common, compositional pattern across languages, so the sense is predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Army engineer comes from a simple image: the army part shows they were 'soldiers' and the engineer part shows they were 'builders' who used tools and plans to make bridges, roads and forts. So today army engineer means a military person trained to do construction and repair work.