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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hew.

To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/hjuː/Canada, Received-Pronunciation, US[çuː]Canada, Received-Pronunciation, US

  1. To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.

    ambitransitive

  2. To shape; to form.

    transitive
    to hew out a sepulchre

  3. To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with to.

    US · transitive
Where this word comes from

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”).

noun/hjuː/Canada, Received-Pronunciation, US[çuː]Canada, Received-Pronunciation, US

  1. Destruction by cutting down or hewing.

    countable · obsolete · rare · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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”).

noun

  1. Hue; colour.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable

  2. Shape; form.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

See hue.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.