# etch vs eth

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### etch
*verb · IPA /ɛt͡ʃ/ · frequency rank #37,917*
To cut into a surface with an acid or other corrosive substance in order to make a pattern. Best known as a technique for creating printing plates, but also used for decoration on metal, and, in modern industry, to make circuit boards.

### eth
*noun · IPA /ɛð/ · frequency rank #22,077*
A letter (capital Ð, small ð) introduced into Old English to represent its dental fricative, then not distinguished from the letter thorn, no longer used in English but still in modern use in Icelandic, the IPA and other phonetic alphabets to represent the voiced dental fricative "th" sound as in the English word then. The letter is also used in Faroese, but is generally silent in that language.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/etch-vs-eth