hew

To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.

Noun countable, obsolete

  1. Hue; colour.
    • […] while the youthful hew Sits on thy skin like morning dew - 1681, Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress, lines 33–34:
  2. Shape; form.
    • He taught to imitate that Lady trew, Whose semblance she did carrie under feigned hew. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza...

Origin

See hue.

Forms

hews

Noun countable, obsolete

  1. Destruction by cutting down or hewing.
    • Of whom he makes such hauocke and such hew, / That swarmes of damned soules to hell he sends - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie,...

Origin

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 West Frisian houwe (“to hew”), Cimbrian hauan (“to dig”), Dutch houwen (“to hew”), German hauen (“to hew”), Luxembourgish haen (“to chop”), Danish hugge (“to hew”), Faroese høgga (“to hew”), Icelandic höggva (“to hew”), Norwegian Bokmål hogge, hugge (“to hew”), Norwegian Nynorsk hogga (“to hew”), Swedish hugga (“to hew”). Sense 3 derives from the phrase hew to the line (literally “cut evenly with an axe or saw”).

Forms

hews

Verb

  1. To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
    • Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder[…] - 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
    • 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. - 1859, Charles Dickens, chapter V, in A Tale of Two Cities,...
    • So that all men despised him in the streets, / He hewed the living rock, with sweat and tears, - 1892, Rudyard Kipling, “Evarra And His Gods”, in Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, 3rd edition, London: Methuen & Co....
  2. To shape; to form.
    • to hew out a sepulchre
    • 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),...
    • Wisedome hath builded her house: she hath hewen out her seuen pillars. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 9:1:
  3. To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with to.
    • Few men measured up to his standard of righteousness; he hewed to the line. - 1905, Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst: A Biography, Jennings & Graham, page 428
    • 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,...
    • 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, […] - 2008,...

Forms

hews hewing hewed hew hewn hewen

Derived

behew forehew forhew hewable hew down hewer hewn hew out mishew rehew rough-hew tohew unhewed