ETCHING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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.

See images of 'Etching'

Etymology of 'Etching'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Etching" Quotes from Famous Books

... and a ragged shepherd, driving a meagre straggling flock, whom we stopped to ask our way of, was a perfect type of pastoral, weather-beaten misery. He was precisely the shepherd for the foreground of a scratchy etching. There were faint odours of spring in the air, and the grass here and there was streaked with great patches of daisies; but it was spring with a foreknowledge of autumn, a day to be enjoyed with a substrain of sadness, the foreboding of regret, a day somehow to ...

— Italian Hours • Henry James

... this!" she suddenly cried. "Here's an etching, a genuine etching, a beautiful thing and all covered with dust. Why, the one I bought for a hundred and fifty dollars in Holland last year isn't half as good. Why, whoever had it put ...

— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... creation to the ingenuity and labor of one's friends—as hand-painted screens or china, embroidered work, or, if one is artistic, a painting or etching—are peculiarly complimentary wedding gifts. ...

— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... more or less success. Anthony Kolberg painted Chopin in 1848-49. Kleczynski reproduces it; it is mature in expression. The Clesinger head I have seen at Pere la Chaise. It is mediocre and lifeless. Kwiatowski has caught some of the Chopin spirit in the etching that may be found in volume one of Niecks' biography. The Winterhalter portrait in Mr. Hadow's volume is too Hebraic, and the Graefle is a trifle ghastly. It is the dead Chopin, but the nose is that of a predaceous bird, painfully aquiline. The "Echo Muzyczne" Warsaw, of October ...

— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... were deepening. Already the trunks of the trees on the far bank of the river were merging into a dull mass. The play of sunlight and shadow in the nearer forest was an etching of white and black. The mellow sudden Western night was dropping glamorous mantle over the familiar scene, softening the crudeness of the camp and exalting the dying round of the forest's fight for solitude. The sand of the grade gleamed with evening tint of ochre. The network ...

— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

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