surveyor

American  

[ser-vey-er] / sərˈveɪ ər /

noun

• surveyors
  plural

1. a person whose occupation is surveying.

2. an overseer or supervisor.

3. Chiefly British. a person who inspects something officially for the purpose of ascertaining condition, value, etc.

4. (formerly) a U.S. customs official responsible for ascertaining the quantity and value of imported merchandise.

5. (initial capital letter) one of a series of space probes (1966–68) that analyzed lunar soil and obtained other scientific information after soft-landing on the moon.

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surveyor British  

/ sɜːˈveɪə /

noun

1. a person whose occupation is to survey land or buildings See also quantity surveyor

2. a person concerned with the official inspection of something for purposes of measurement and valuation

3. a person who carries out surveys, esp of ships ( marine surveyor ) to determine seaworthiness, etc

4. a customs official

5. archaic a supervisor

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• surveyorship
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• surveyors
  plural

Etymology

Origin of surveyor

1375–1425; late Middle English surveio ( u ) r < Anglo-French surveiour; Middle French surve ( i ) our, equivalent to surve ( i )- ( see survey) + -our -or ²

Explanation

A surveyor is someone who estimates or measures the dimensions of land. Surveyors help make maps, and are important when planning new buildings. To survey is to measure the dimensions of land, including acreage and altitude. A surveyor is an engineer who measures such dimensions as a profession. The government needs surveyors to map the boundaries of zones and districts. When constructing new buildings, surveyors help determine how much land is being built on, what size the building should be, and how the altitude might influence the process. If you like math, planning, and building, you might enjoy being a surveyor.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

surveyor surveyors

One of those displaced by the advance was Jamal Abu Miri, a 68-year-old retired land surveyor who understood firsthand that the Yellow Line was more than just an arbitrary marker on a map.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026

So he accepts Washington’s self-description as an experienced surveyor and hires him to lead a small expedition to chart the lands.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026

"Before, we used to pass on the left; now the passage is to the right of the sandbank, and it's very, very narrow," said Daniela Cuoghi, a surveyor for Aipo.

From Barron's ● Jun. 27, 2026

It narrates the bittersweet adventures of the titular astronomer and his surveyor sidekick who carved the boundary separating slave states from free.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026

He’d been to Trinity College in Dublin, and he was a surveyor.

From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

As Manchester recounted, “The artist’s eye was uncanny; next morning a team of surveyors found he had been less than six inches off the axis.”

From Salon ● May 7, 2026

But though Americans haven’t held back their complaints from surveyors, other signals point to a stretched but resilient consumer economy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026

That means it couldn’t deploy surveyors to the field to collect the real-time pricing data needed to help generate the inflation index.

From Barron's ● Oct. 24, 2025

After the passage of a $2-million bond measure by Los Angeles voters in 1925, hundreds of surveyors fanned out across the largely roadless Mojave and Sonoran deserts to take measurements and study potential routes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2025

George Washington was one of many surveyors whose work enabled them to increase their own landholdings.

From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Related Words

• assessor
• cartographer