Etched

How to spell etched

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce etched

What does etched mean?

1. verbCut or engraved a design into a hard surface, often using acid or a sharp tool.
2. verbFixed something firmly and lastingly, as if cut into a surface.

Etched in a sentence

• The jeweller etched a delicate pattern into the silver band.

• That long winter was etched into her memory by the power cuts.

• The artist etched the city skyline onto a copper plate before printing it.

• The shock of the news etched itself deep in his thoughts.

Where does etched come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is the past tense of 'etch', which English borrowed from the Dutch verb 'etsen' in the early 1600s. The Dutch word came in turn from the German 'ätzen', meaning 'to corrode' or, more vividly, 'to cause to eat into'. That sense traces back to a Proto-Germanic root that also gave us the everyday word 'eat', because the original technique literally let acid eat lines into a metal plate. Printmakers coated a plate, scratched a design through the coating, then bathed it in acid that bit into the exposed metal. From that craft the word spread to mean cutting any sharp design into a hard surface, and then figuratively to anything fixed deeply in the mind. The spelling keeps the 'tch' cluster typical of short native verbs like 'fetch' and 'sketch', which is the small trap, since the word can sound as though it begins more simply.

How the word is built

• etch (to engrave by corroding a surface)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)