Other forms: pews
A pew is a long wooden bench in a church. Fixed to the floor, hard on the back, with a shelf for hymn books.
They replaced standing in English churches from about the fifteenth century, and families once rented their own and locked the doors on them. Many are now being taken out again in favour of chairs, which causes a great deal of local feeling. British informal speech has one warm idiom, since telling somebody to take a pew simply means sit down, and it is used anywhere, church or not.
1nounpewA long fixed bench in a church.
“They sat in the second pew from the front.”
A pew is a little foot. Greek pōdion, the diminutive of pous, foot, became Latin podium, a parapet, then Old French puie, a balcony, and by the time it reached English it had come all the way down to a bench.
Proto-Indo-European
*ped-
Ancient Greek
πόδιον — little foot
Latin
podia
Old French
puiee
Middle English
pewe
English, today
pew
Built from
From Middle English pewe, from Old French puiee, puïe (“balustrade, balcony”), from Latin podia, plural of podium (“parapet, podium”), from Ancient Greek πόδιον (“little foot”), from πούς (“foot”). a doublet of podia.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA