Glossary
Marine Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential marine engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key marine engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in marine engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ABET
- Engineering program accreditor.
- Ballast
- Weight for stability.
- CAD
- Computer-aided design.
- Class society
- Ship rules organization.
- Displacement
- Weight of water a ship moves.
- Draft
- Depth below waterline.
- FE exam
- Fundamentals of Engineering exam.
- Freeboard
- Height above water.
- Hull
- Body of a ship.
- Metacentric height
- Stability measure.
- PE license
- Professional Engineer license.
- Propulsion
- Systems that move ships.
- Sea trial
- Testing at sea.
- Specification
- Detailed requirements.
- Stability
- Ability to stay upright.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Marine Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Marine Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.