hew
verb
- cut (with an axe)
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /hjuː/ / /xjuː/
name
Etymology: Variant of Hugh.
- A surname originating as a patronymic.
noun
Etymology: See hue.
- Hue; colour.
“[…] while the youthful hew Sits on thy skin like morning dew”
- Shape; form.
“He taught to imitate that Lady trew, Whose semblance she did carrie under feigned hew.”
verb
Etymology: 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”).
- To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
“Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder[…]”
“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.”
- 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.”
- 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.”
“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.”