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Chew vs Hew - What's the difference?

chew | hew |

As a verb chew

is to crush with the teeth by repeated closing and opening of the jaws; done to food to soften it and break it down by the action of saliva before it is swallowed.

As a noun chew

is a small sweet, such as a taffy, that is eaten by chewing.

As a proper noun hew is

.

chew

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To crush with the teeth by repeated closing and opening of the jaws; done to food to soften it and break it down by the action of saliva before it is swallowed.
    • Make sure to chew thoroughly, and don't talk with your mouth full!
    The steak was tough to chew as it had been cooked too long.
  • To grind, tear, or otherwise degrade or demolish something with teeth or as with teeth.
    • He keep his feed in steel drums to prevent the mice from chewing holes in the feed-sacks.
    The harsh desert wind and sand had chewed the stump into ragged strips of wood.
  • (informal) To think about something; to ponder; to chew over.
    • The professor stood at the blackboard, chalk in hand, and chewed the question the student had asked.
  • * Alexander Pope
    • Old politicians chew wisdom past.
  • * Prior
    • He chews revenge, abjuring his offense.

    Synonyms

    * (crush food with teeth prior to swallowing) bite, chavel, chomp, crunch, masticate * (degrade or demolish as if with teeth) grind, pulverize, rip, shred, tear * (think about) contemplate, ruminate, mull, muse, ponder * See also

    Derived terms

    * chewing gum * chew out * chew over * chew the cud * chew the fat * chew the scenery * chew up * chewy

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A small sweet, such as a taffy, that is eaten by chewing.
    • Phillip purchased a bag of licorice chews at the drugstore.
  • (informal, uncountable) Chewing tobacco.
    • The school had banned chew and smokes from the school grounds, even for adults.
  • (countable, or, uncountable) A plug or wad of chewing tobacco; chaw or a chaw.
    • ''The ballplayers sat on the bench watching the rain, glumly working their chews .
    The first time he chewed tobacco, he swallowed his chew and got extremely sick.

    Derived terms

    * chew toy * penny chew

    hew

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) hewen, from (etyl) . See also (l).

    Verb

  • To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Hew them to pieces; hack their bones asunder.
  • * 1912 : (Edgar Rice Burroughs), (Tarzan of the Apes), Chapter 6
    • Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.
  • To shape; to form.
    • to hew out a sepulchre
  • * Bible, Is. li. 1
    • Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn .
  • * Alexander Pope
    • rather polishing old works than hewing out new
  • (US) To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with (to).
  • * 1905 , Albert Osborn, : A Biography , ] Jennings & Graham, [http://books.google.com/books?id=I3UEAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA428&dq=hewed page 428,
    • Few men measured up to his standard of righteousness; he hewed to the line.
  • * 1998 , and Lawrence Davidson, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines , Collectors Press, Inc., ISBN 1-888054-12-3, page 103,
    • Inside the stories usually hewed to a consistent formula: no matter how outlandish and weird the circumstances, in the end everything had to have a natural, if not plausible, ending—frequently, though not always, involving a mad scientist.
  • * 2008 , , Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik , Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-12990-8, page 28,
    • Faculty members and students alike were buzzing with the fashionable nostrums that dominated U.S. education discourse in the late sixties,
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2012 , date=May 27 , author=Nathan Rabin , title=TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid on the Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992) , work=The Onion AV Club citation , page= , passage=Hewing to the old comedy convention of beginning a speech by randomly referencing something in eyesight, Homer begins his talk about the birds and the bees by saying that women are like refrigerators: they’re all about six feet tall and weigh three hundred pounds and make ice cubes. }}
  • *{{quote-web
    • , date =2013-10-02 , first =Alex , last =Pappademas , title =Leuqes! LEUQES! LEUQES!'' – The ''Shining sequel and what it says about Stephen King , site =Grantland.com , url =http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9751517/the-shining-sequel-career-stephen-king , accessdate = 2013-10-16 }}
  • *:King recovered the rights on the condition that he'd stop publicly disparaging Kubrick's version. "For a long time I hewed that line," he told CBS News in June. "And then Mr. Kubrick died. So now I figured, what the hell. I've gone back to saying mean things about it."
    • Derived terms
    * hewer * rough-hew

    Etymology 2

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) hue; colour
    • (Chaucer)
  • (obsolete) shape; form
    • (Spenser)
  • Destruction by cutting down.
  • * Spenser
    • Of whom he makes such havoc and such hew .
    (Webster 1913) English irregular verbs