adjectivescollocationnuancepast-participlesword-choice
Which (if any) of these adjectives would you use for describing a surface that has been cut using a laser beam:
So far I have found out that etched is generally lighter and made with acid, while engrave refers to a deeper trace, usually done with some physical tool.
But in the context of lasers, I have seen both words used. Are they interchangeable, or is there some difference in nuance?
I used Google books to see if I could figure out how quickly this phrase is catching on, and how long it's been in widespread use. That's difficult to ascertain, because a great majority of the time, “laser focused” is found in a scientific journal, and is referring to, well, focused lasers – i.e., stuff like this:
A 50-mW laser focused into a cell with a 10-cm focal length lens is no more effective than a 5-mW laser focused with a 1-cm focal length lens.
By the year 2005, though, metaphorical use the phrase crops up more and more; I'd venture a guess that, by that time, using laser-focused to describe someone's mind or concentration was no longer novel or uncommon. As you might imagine, the phrase shows up quite a few times in the very unscientific 2006 book Focus Like a Laser Beam: 10 Ways to Do What Matters Most; a blogger headlined a 2009 entry with Steve Jobs Is Laser Focused on the Apple Tablet.
The earliest entry I could find to this more metaphorical usage of the term was in a 1995 book called The Kennedy Women by Laurence Leamer:
(I'm not insisting that's the first use of the term, I'm just saying that's the earliest one I could find, after spending 10 minutes or so leafing through the search results. Nonetheless, it's interesting how Leamer chose to hyphenate the two-word term, but, fourteen years later, the blogger did not. That fits what some have said in other ELU threads: early uses of a newly-coined phrase are often hyphenated, while that hyphen tends to get dropped as the usage becomes more widespread.)
My final answer? Ten years ago, I might have said that laser-focused was an up-and-coming word, but today, I think it's more deeply rooted and firmly established.
forge + tive
probably from forge + -tive (as in inventive) First Known Use: 1597
Forge: form or create with concerted effort.
The politician's recent actions are an effort to forge a relationship with undecided voters.
Easily forgotten: forgettable easily forgotten, esp. through being uninteresting or mediocre.
It was an extremely forgettable performance.
someone who forgets: forgetful: apt or likely not to remember.
I'm a bit forgetful these days
also: absentminded
Best Answer
I think which one you would use also depends strongly on the context in which you are working.
If you are working on marketing material, for instance, I'd probably lean towards "laser-engraved." On the other hand, if you are writing a technical work, then I would comment that a search in Web of Science (note: subscription required), actually returns more than an order of magnitude more links for "laser etch*" (nearly 40,000) versus "laser engrav*" (about 3,000). So, for any sort of technical writing, laser-etched is actually preferred to laser-engraved.
A Google Scholar search is even more lopsided in favor of "laser etching":