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

"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

The first gallery looks at Washington’s childhood and teen years, his parents, and his first job as a 16-year-old surveyor, including a set of his equipment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026

Malaysia’s palm oil exports during the April 1-30 period are estimated to have fallen 16% on month at 1,346,859 metric tons, cargo surveyor AmSpec Agri Malaysia said Thursday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026

Apart from the Walden adventure, Thoreau appeared as a public speaker and worked as a surveyor and in his father’s very successful pencil factory, for which he created some important innovations.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2026

In fact, while many US history books depict George Washington as a heroic Founding Father and a surveyor too, Indigenous peoples do not think of him that way.

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

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

Using light traps, surveyors had been looking for the limnephilus taricus species of caddisfly, but instead found the limnephilus patis, which is even rarer.

From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2025

The ancient pharaohs assigned surveyors to assess the damage and reset the boundary markers, and thus geometry was born.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife

Related Words

• assessor
• cartographer