Who is it hews his foe to mammocks; writes “Acquittal” on his tomb—and dies?
She swims to a stake, to which she clings, and John hews her in three, QQ.
The ambitious carpenter first hews out a distorted caricature of a man, which he passes over to the painters to be embellished.
It was at least something to have discovered that Will hews was an Elizabethan name.
He hacks and hews at Southey through several furious Essays, and ends with a groan.
Some he hews out at the base and flings behind him on the field.
Hrapp hews at Grim there and then with his axe; Helgi sees this and cuts at Hrapp's arm, and cut it off, and down fell the axe.
The ordinary collier is paid by piecework—so much per ton for all the coal he hews.
This they did, and presently came to the hero with the hews that the man lived and desired to speak with his deliverer.
Every branch he hews from a tree on our soil is a limb lopped from Hoithlees body.
Old English heawan "to chop, hack, gash" (class VII strong verb; past tense heow, past participle heawen), earlier geheawan, from Proto-Germanic *hawwan (cf. Old Norse hoggva, Old Frisian hawa, Old Saxon hauwan, Middle Dutch hauwen, Dutch houwen, Old High German houwan, German hauen "to cut, strike, hew"), from PIE root *kau- "to hew, strike" (cf. Old Church Slavonic kovo, Lithuanian kauju "to beat, forge;" Latin cudere "to strike, beat;" Middle Irish cuad "beat, fight").
Weak past participle hewede appeared 14c., but hasn't displaced hewn. Seemingly contradictory sense of "hold fast, stick to" (in phrase hew to) developed from hew to the line "stick to a course," literally "cut evenly with an axe or saw," first recorded 1891. Related: Hewed; hewing.