Engineering as a profession has licensure- as does a doctor or nurse. There are potential legal consequences for calling oneself an engineer when one is not.

There should be some effort to fight ambiguity masquerading as fluidity. They are not the same thing. This ambiguity literally got a child decapitated recently.

It's a classification, so I don't think that's so. "Driver" is an equivalent term.

https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/resources/faq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...

>Since regulation of the practice of engineering is performed by the individual states in the United States, areas of engineering involved in interstate commerce are essentially unregulated. These areas include much of mechanical, aerospace, and chemical engineering—and may be specifically exempted from regulation under an "industrial exemption." An industrial exemption covers engineers who design products such as automobiles that are sold (or have the potential to be sold) outside the state where they are produced, as well as the equipment used to produce the product.

According to the other:

>Engineering licensure constitutes an integral part of the program of professional development of many companies; so much so, in fact, that many progressive companies have specific policies encouraging licensure and providing concrete assistance to engineers taking their first steps toward licensure

This implies that they are engineers even before licensure.

But language being fluid, fighting it seems perfectly reasonable.