Other forms: etching, etched, etches
To etch is to cut a design into a surface using acid. The acid bites where the surface is unprotected.
It is a printmaking technique, and the plate is coated, drawn on with a needle, then dipped so the acid eats the exposed lines. A print made this way is an etching. Glass is etched too, which is how frosted patterns are made. The figurative sense is about permanence, since something etched on your memory will not go, and lines etched into a face are deep ones. Engraving is the version done with a blade.
Etching makes the acid eat. English took the word from Dutch etsen, beside German ätzen, which goes back to a causative meaning to cause to bite or to feed, built on the verb that gives eat.
Dutch
etsen
English, today
etch
Built from
Borrowed from Dutch etsen. From Dutch etsen (“to etch”), from German ätzen (“to etch”), from Old High German azzon (“to cause to bite or feed”), from Proto-Germanic atjaną, causative of etaną (“to eat”) (whence also English eat).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA