hew
pronunciation
How to pronounce hew in British English:
UK [hjuː]
How to pronounce hew in American English:
US [hjuː]
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- Verb:
- make or shape as with an axe
- strike with an axe; cut down, strike
Word Origin
- hew (v.)
- Old English heawan "to chop, hack, gash" (class VII strong verb; past tense heow, past participle heawen), earlier geheawan, from Proto-Germanic *hawwan (cognates: Old Norse hoggva, Old Frisian hawa, Old Saxon hauwan, Middle Dutch hauwen, Dutch houwen, Old High German houwan, German hauen "to cut, strike, hew"), from PIE root *kau- "to hew, strike" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic kovo, Lithuanian kauju "to beat, forge;" Latin cudere "to strike, beat;" Middle Irish cuad "beat, fight"). Weak past participle hewede appeared 14c., but hasn't displaced hewn. Seemingly contradictory sense of "hold fast, stick to" (in phrase hew to) developed from hew to the line "stick to a course," literally "cut evenly with an axe or saw," first recorded 1891. Related: Hewed; hewing.
Example
- 1. State media and the judiciary hew to the official line .
- 2. With this faith , we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope .
- 3. That the government had to hew to the imf 's diktats and slash tariffs across the board gave industries little scope to jockey for exemptions .
- 4. In fact , nobody really knows how neolithic man managed to hew these pillars .
- 5. And that which is neither deed nor reflection , but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul , even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom ?