hew

From Middle English hewen, from Old English hēawan, from Proto-West Germanic *hauwan, from Proto-Germanic *hawwaną, from Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂- (“to strike, hew, forge”). Cognate to German hauen, Dutch houwen and Swedish hugga. Sense 3 derives from the phrase hew to the line (literally “cut evenly with an axe or saw”).

• IPA^(key): /hjuː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -uː
• Homophones: hue, Hiw, Hugh

hew (third-person singular simple present hews, present participle hewing, simple past hewed or (rare) hew, past participle hewn or hewed or (archaic) hewen)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder […]

   • 1859, Charles Dickens, chapter V, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, , →OCLC:

     A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted.

   • 1892, Rudyard Kipling, “Evarra And His Gods”, in Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, 3rd edition, London: Methuen & Co. , →OCLC, page 163:

     So that all men despised him in the streets, / He hewed the living rock, with sweat and tears,

   • 1912, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Logger”, in Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, →OCLC:

     My ways are hard and rough, and my arms are strong and tough, / And I hew the dizzy pine till darkness falls;

   • 1912, Edith Wharton, The Reef‎, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company:

     She flung back the fortnight on his hands as if he had been an idler indifferent to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist who, to respond to her call, had had to hew his way through a very jungle of engagements!

   • 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as chapter 6, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A. L. Burt Company, 1914 June, →OCLC:

     Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.

2. (transitive) To shape; to form.

   to hew out a sepulchre

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Isaiah 51:1:

     Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousnesse, ye that seeke the Lord: looke vnto the rocke whence yee are hewen, and to the hole of the pitte whence ye are digged.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Proverbs 9:1:

     Wisedome hath builded her house: she hath hewen out her seuen pillars.

   • 1734 December 19, Alexander Pope, letter to Jonathan Swift:

     rather polishing old works than hewing out new

   • 1911, Gene Stratton-Porter, The Harvester‎:

     The oak he had hauled was being hewed into shape by a neighbour who knew how, and every wagon that carried a log to the city to be dressed at the mill brought back timber for side walls, joists, and rafters.

   • 2003 April 26, Adrienne Rich, “Hewn from the living words”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     In 1974, I spoke of poetry as “hewn from the commonest living substance” as a doorframe is hewn of wood.

   • 2022 December 15, Samanth Subramanian, “Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site”, in The Guardian‎:

     Constructed by a firm named Posiva, Onkalo has been hewn into the island of Olkiluoto, a brief bridge’s length off Finland’s south-west coast.

3. (transitive, US) To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with to.
   • 1905, Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst: A Biography, Jennings & Graham, page 428

     Few men measured up to his standard of righteousness; he hewed to the line.

   • 1998, Frank M. Robinson, Lawrence Davidson, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines‎, Collectors Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 103:

     Inside the stories usually hewed to a consistent formula: no matter how outlandish and weird the circumstances, in the end everything had to have a natural, if not plausible, ending—frequently, though not always, involving a mad scientist.

   • 2008, Chester E. Finn, Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 28:

     Faculty members and students alike were buzzing with the fashionable nostrums that dominated U.S. education discourse in the late sixties, […] These hewed to the recommendations of the Plowden Report, […]

   • 2012 May 27, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid on the Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     Hewing to the old comedy convention of beginning a speech by randomly referencing something in eyesight, Homer begins his talk about the birds and the bees by saying that women are like refrigerators: they’re all about six feet tall and weigh three hundred pounds and make ice cubes.

   • 2013 October 2, Alex Pappademas, “Leuqes! LEUQES! LEUQES! – The Shining sequel and what it says about Stephen King”, in Grantland.com‎, retrieved 2013-10-16:

     King recovered the rights on the condition that he'd stop publicly disparaging Kubrick's version. "For a long time I hewed that line," he told CBS News in June. "And then Mr. Kubrick died. So now I figured, what the hell. I've gone back to saying mean things about it."

hew (countable and uncountable, plural hews)

1. (obsolete) Destruction by cutting down or hewing.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 49:

     Of whom he makes such hauocke and such hew, / That swarmes of damned soules to hell he sends

See hue.

hew (countable and uncountable, plural hews)

1. (obsolete) Hue; colour.
   • 1681, Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress, lines 33–34:

     […] while the youthful hew
     Sits on thy skin like morning dew

2. (obsolete) Shape; form.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 46:

     He taught to imitate that Lady trew,
     Whose semblance she did carrie under feigned hew.

• weh

hew

1. baboon

• Beria-English English-Beria Dictionary ADESK, Iriba, Kobe Department, Chad