hew
/hjuː/
hew verb: to chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
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Verb
hew (third-person singular simple present hews, present participle hewing, simple past hewed or (rare) hew, past participle hewn or hewed or (archaic) hewen)
- 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: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- 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, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC
- 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), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 51:1
- 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, involving a mad scientist.1998, Frank M. Robinson, Lawrence Davidson, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines, Collectors Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 103
Noun (1)
hew (countable and uncountable, plural hews)
- Destruction by cutting down or hewing.
- Of whom he makes such hauocke and such hew, / That swarmes of damned soules to hell he sends1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 49
Noun (2)
hew (countable and uncountable, plural hews)
- Hue; colour.
- […] while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning dew1681, Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress, lines 33–34
- […] while the youthful hew
- 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 46
- He taught to imitate that Lady trew,
Proper noun (1) capitalized: HEW
HEW
- Initialism of (US Department of) Health, Education, and Welfare, now HHS.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Hew
Hew (plural Hews)
- A surname originating as a patronymic.
Examples of hew in a sentence
- 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. […], →OCLC, page...
- My ways are hard and rough, and my arms are strong and tough, / And I hew the dizzy pine till darkness falls;1912, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Logger”, in Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, →OCLC:
- Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as...
- 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:
Forms of hew
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | hews |
| present participle | hewing |
| past | hewed |
| past participle | hewn |
| past participle | hewed |
| past (rare) | hew |
| past participle (archaic) | hewen |
| Noun | |
| plural | hews |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Hews |
Origin of 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 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”).
See hue.
Variant of Hugh.
Words formed from hew
Words that rhyme with hew
Questions about hew
- What does hew mean?
- Hew means to chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
- How do you use hew in a sentence?
- So that all men despised him in the streets, / He hewed the living rock, with sweat and tears,
- What part of speech is hew?
- Hew can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce hew?
- Hew is pronounced /hjuː/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of hew?
- The past tense of hew is hewed.
Words near hew in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hew (page history and authors); HEW (page history and authors); Hew (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hew.wav.
Cite this entry: “hew.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hew. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.