So I decided to search the definition of engineering on the internet because I've heard this whole "software engineering is not engineering" thing before:

> Engineering (from Latin ingenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise") is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.

So, software "engineering" definitely involves the use of scientific, economic, social and practical knowledge to build, maintain, research, and improve devices, systems, and processes. So that, in my lowly opinion, makes it engineering "in the strictest sense of the term".

Arguing about semantics is extremely stupid if you are not a PHD in linguistics.