engraving

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,875 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: engravings

An engraving is a design cut into a hard surface. A steel engraving, engraving on the back, the engraving is worn.

In printing it means a picture printed from a cut plate, and before photography that was how every illustration in every book was made. On jewellery and trophies it is the inscription, and hand engraving is a trade with very few practitioners left.

Definitions of engraving

1nounengravingA design cut into a hard surface.B2+
“The silver watch had an engraving of his initials on the back.”

engraving is a design.

Where it comes from

by surface analysis, engrave + -ing.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Jewellery & Watches

Practise this word

engraving in the wild

The block is cut along the wood grain (unlike wood engraving, where the block is cut in the end-grain).
Woodcut
In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving.
Drypoint
The term generally refers to rock engravings of ancient origin, often associated with prehistoric peoples.
Petroglyph
Laser engraving is the practice of using lasers to engrave an object.
Laser engraving
The engraving process renders a design by physically cutting into the object to remove material.
Laser engraving

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

engrave

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