ETCHING • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Etching

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/ˈɛtʃɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Etching n.

The act, art, or practice of engraving by means of acid which eats away lines or surfaces left unprotected in metal, glass, or the like. See Etch, v. t.

A design carried out by means of the above process; a pattern on metal, glass, etc., produced by etching.

An impression on paper, parchment, or other material, taken in ink from an etched plate.

Etching figures (Min.), markings produced on the face of a crystal by the action of an appropriate solvent. They have usually a definite form, and are important as revealing the molecular structure.

Etching needle, a sharp-pointed steel instrument with which lines are drawn in the ground or varnish in etching.

Etching stitch (Needlework), a stitch used outline embroidery.

verb

Etch v. t. (past & past part. etched; pres. part. etching)

To produce, as figures or designs, on mental, glass, or the like, by means of lines or strokes eaten in or corroded by means of some strong acid. Note: The plate is first covered with varnish, or some other ground capable of resisting the acid, and this is then scored or scratched with a needle, or similar instrument, so as to form the drawing; the plate is then covered with acid, which corrodes the metal in the lines thus laid bare.

To subject to etching; to draw upon and bite with acid, as a plate of metal. "I was etching a plate at the beginning of 1875."

To sketch; to delineate. (R.) "There are many empty terms to be found in some learned writes, to which they had recourse to etch out their system."

Etch v. i. To practice etching; to make etchings.

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Etymology of 'Etching'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Etching" Quotes from Famous Books

... grief-stricken terror that quaked and burned in his soul, etching unforgettable scars, the recollection of his unsteady spurts of penance rose to mock him with their artificiality. His remorse had been but a pale, theatric spree! And now in this forgetful winter of his ...

— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... (1650), shows the genesis of the coffee house of western Europe about the time it still partook of some of the tavern characteristics. Coffee is being served to a group in the foreground. It is believed to be the oldest existing picture of a coffee house. The illustration is after the etching by J. Beauvarlet in the ...

— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... worked in the finest black silk procurable, in order more closely to imitate etching. It is worked in point Russe and scallop stitch; the dark shaded scallops are worked in button-hole scallop stitch, the stitches being taken very closely together, but not raised by the usual method of placing ...

— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton

... and saw that it was a wonderfully perfect etching of a head by Henner—a first impression, beyond a doubt. It was a girl's head, half life size, almost in profile, white against the dark rain of her hair, which covered her shoulders and bust and blackened all the rest of the picture. The haunting melancholy, the youth, ...

— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... between 1500 and 1650, are the reverse of the opinion commonly entertained. I was conversing on this subject with a friend, when the servant, a worthy and sensible woman, coming in, I placed before her two engravings, the one a pinky-coloured plate of the day, the other a masterly etching by Salvator Rosa from one of his own pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied "Why, that, Sir, to be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print shops);—it's ...

— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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