hew

verb

1. (ambitransitive)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.”

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

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

   “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!”

2. (transitive)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.”

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

   “rather polishing old works than hewing out new”

   “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.”

3. (US, transitive)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.”

   “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, […]”

   “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.”

   “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."”

noun

1. (countable, obsolete, rare, uncountable)Destruction by cutting down or hewing.

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

2. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Hue; colour.

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

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Shape; form.

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

name

1. A surname originating as a patronymic.
2. (US, abbreviation, alt-of, historical, initialism)Initialism of (US Department of) Health, Education, and Welfare, now HHS.