Pet Peeve, anyone?

Every so often I hear someone refer to something as "over-engineered" and it really bugs me.

People normally say this when referring to something that is very heavily constructed. In my view, something can be "over-constructed" so that it has more structure than needed to carry a given load, for example, but over-engineered just doesn't make any sense. If something is properly engineered, it's design is optimized for the given purpose. I don't think it's possible for something to be "over-optimized" and therefore, it can't be over-engineered. In fact, something that uses far more material than required for the task could be considered "under-engineered" because someone didn't take the time to do the job properly, and just used the SWAG* method.

So next time you are tempted to refer to something as over-engineered, please give us poor engineers a break, okay?

Thank you for your attention.

Anyone else have a pet peeve they need to rant on about?

*SWAG - acronym for "Scientific Wild Ass Guess"