etch

To cut into a surface with an acid or other corrosive substance in order to make a pattern. Best known as a technique for creating printing plates, but also used for decoration on metal, and, in modern industry, to make circuit boards.

Noun

  1. Obsolete form of eddish.
    • Black Oats are commonly sown upon an Etch Crop, or on a Lay which they plow up in January, when the Earth is moist, taking care to turn the Turf well, and to lay it even and flat. - 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art...

Verb

  1. To cut into a surface with an acid or other corrosive substance in order to make a pattern. Best known as a technique for creating printing plates, but also used for decoration on metal, and, in modern industry, to make circuit boards.
  2. To engrave a surface.
  3. To make a lasting impression.
    • The memory of 9/11 is etched into my mind.
  4. To sketch; to delineate.
    • There are many such empty terms to be found in some learned writers, to which they had recourse to etch out their system. - a. 1705, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous Works of Mr. John...

Origin

From Dutch etsen (“to etch”), from German ätzen (“to etch”), from Old High German azzon (“to cause to bite or feed”), from Proto-Germanic *atjaną, causative of *etaną (“to eat”) (whence also English eat).

Forms

etches etching etched

Related

etchant etching

Derived

cryoetch etchable etcher etchplain etchplanation microetch overetch photoetch piranha etch self-etch total-etch underetch