In a series of adjectives about fields of study such as physical, mathematical, historical, philosophical etc. how would the field of engineering fit in?
I looked it up in one of my Danish-English dictionaries (Ordbogen.com) by translating a Danish equivalent word and found this translation:
ingeniørmæssig <-t, -e>
– engineerical: adjektiv – It is an engineerical wonder
Apparently, the word engineerical exists. But I am unable to find the description of that word in any native English dictionary online, such as Lexico by Oxford, Vocabulary or Dictionary. So, it doesn't seem officially recognised.
A Google search shows – apart from some Twitter and Youtube accounts – some results that do define it:
In "Build your own dictionary" by Meriam-Webster Word Central, a user defines it like this:
engineerical
Function: adjective
Definition: having great talent as an engineer: showing great skill in engineering
Example Sentence: That engineerical construction worker built an amazing tower.
The Urban Dictionary and Definithing define it like this:
Engineerical
Desription of a person who applies mathematical and scientific solutions to fix a problem.
I can not fix that machine. I am not engineerical.
This all indicates to me that this might be some "slang" word, if it exists at all. And frankly, the two shown definitions above are no entirely equivalent.
So, does this word not exist? My Danish-English dictionary is wrong? Is there an alternative I could use in the series mentioned, something that would make a sentence like the following sound proper:
The questions on the test can be physical, mathematical, historical or engineerical in nature.
Best Answer
It seems as if there really should be some common adjective to describe engineering things -- but, unlike so many other disciplines, there isn't. "Engineerical" is not a word, or at least not one you would use seriously.
There are several solutions to this deficit:
(As per Lambie's suggestion) rewrite the sentence using nouns:
Use a semantically correct but stylistically awkward compound:
Use an awkward repeating term that nevertheless preserves parallelism:
Note that the use of "physical" to mean "physics-related" may be confusing, as the more common uses are: