Engraving

How to spell engraving

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce engraving

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does engraving mean?

1. nounA picture or design printed from a metal or wooden plate into which the image has been cut.
2. nounThe art or process of cutting a design into a hard surface, often for printing or decoration.

Engraving in a sentence

• The museum displayed a delicate engraving of the old harbour.

• She studied engraving for three years before opening her own workshop.

• He framed the antique engraving and hung it above the desk.

• The jeweller charges extra for engraving on the inside of the ring.

Where does engraving come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the verb 'engrave', which combines the prefix 'en-', meaning roughly 'to make' or 'to put into', with the old verb 'grave', meaning to carve or cut into a hard surface. That 'grave' element traces back to the Old English grafan, 'to dig or carve', and it is the same root that gives us the burial 'grave', a hole dug in the ground. A closely related French verb, graver, 'to incise', reinforced the form when English borrowed and blended the two in the 1400s. By the 1500s 'engraving' named both the craft of cutting designs into metal or wood and the printed picture pulled from such a cut plate. The spelling stays helpfully regular: keep the 'en-' opening, the single 'v', and the plain '-ing' ending, with no doubled letters to trip over.

How the word is built

• en- (to put into, make)
• grave (to carve or cut, from Old English grafan: to dig, carve)
• -ing (noun/verb suffix)