hewing
/ˈhjuːɪŋ/
hewing is the present participle and gerund of hew.
Meaning of hew
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]...
- To shape; to form.
- to hew out a sepulchre
- 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
Noun
hewing (plural hewings)
- The act of one who hews or chops.
- Hadley [the sculptor] could afford to let his hewings be rough where the monarchical extremities were concerned, as these were to be covered by the raiment of state.2010, Stephen Smith, Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets
- Hewing to this principle, I walked along the lakeshore at Bosque del Apache as the stragglers of a flock of Sandhill Cranes made their morning departure.2021, Peter Cavanagh, “9. Cranes”, in 100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight, →ISBN, page 218
Forms of hewing
| plural | hewings |
|---|
Phrases with hewing
Words that rhyme with hewing
Questions about hewing
- What does hewing mean?
- Hewing means the act of one who hews or chops.
- What is hewing the present participle and gerund of?
- Hewing is the present participle and gerund of hew.
- What part of speech is hewing?
- Hewing is a noun.
- How do you pronounce hewing?
- Hewing is pronounced /ˈhjuːɪŋ/.
- What is the plural of hewing?
- The plural of hewing is hewings.
Words near hewing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hewing (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.
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Cite this entry: “hewing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hewing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.