You can think of lacquer as a wet layer that you put on a surface and then wait for. While it is wet it is nothing much. Once it dries it becomes a thin hard skin that holds the surface still and throws back the light. Everything the word does grows out of that one moment of setting: the liquid in the tin, the act of brushing it on, and even the spray that freezes a for the evening.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary traces lacquer through French lacque and Portuguese laca ('gum lac') back through Persian lāk and Hindi lākh to Sanskrit lākṣā, and calls it a doublet of lac. The older meaning is a resin, which sits close to the modern picture of a sticky liquid that hardens into a shine.
Wiktionary 的線索是：梵文 lākṣā → 印地語 lākh → 波斯語 lāk → 葡萄牙語 laca（樹脂）→ 法語 lacque → 英文，並指出它和 lac 是雙生字。早期指的是樹脂。那團會凝固的樹脂，和今天「乾了會硬、會亮」的畫面剛好接得上。
Wiktionary, "lacquer"
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