Other forms: hewed, hewing, hews
To hew is to chop or cut with heavy blows. Hew the timber, hewn from stone, hew a path.
It means cutting with an axe or adze rather than a saw, which leaves the surface faceted — hewn beams in an old roof show every stroke. Hew to something means to stick closely to it, which is American. The past participle is hewn. Note that the word is Old English and very old.
1verbhewTo chop or cut with heavy blows.
“The settlers hewed logs from the forest to build their cabins.”
hew is a chopping.
Old English heawan means to cut or strike, from a Proto-Indo-European root. Hay and hoe come from the same cutting.
Proto-Indo-European
*kewh₂- — to strike, hew, forge
Proto-Germanic
*hawwaną
Proto-West Germanic
*hauwan
Old English
hēawan
Middle English
hewen
English, today
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”), cim hauan (“to dig”), Dutch houwen (“to hew”), German hauen (“to hew”), lb 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”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA