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Mew vs Hew - What's the difference?

mew | hew |

As a noun mew

is (obsolete) a gull, seagull or mew can be (obsolete) a prison, or other place of confinement or mew can be the crying sound of a cat; a meow.

As a verb mew

is (obsolete) to shut away, confine, lock up or mew can be (of a cat) to meow.

As an interjection mew

is a cat's cry.

As a proper noun hew is

.

mew

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) mewe, from (etyl) 'to roar', Old Church Slavonic (myjati) 'to mew'.

Noun

(en noun)
  • (obsolete) A gull, seagull.
  • * , II.xii:
    • A daungerous and detestable place, / To which nor fish nor fowle did once approch, / But yelling Meawes , with Seagulles hoarse and bace [...].

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) mue, (muwe), and (etyl) .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) A prison, or other place of confinement.
  • (obsolete) A hiding place; a secret store or den.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.vii:
    • Ne toung did tell, ne hand these handled not, / But safe I haue them kept in secret mew , / From heauens sight, and powre of all which them pursew.
  • (falconry) A cage for hawks, especially while moulting.
  • *, vol.I, New York, 2001, p.243:
    • A horse in a stable that never travels, a hawk in a mew that seldom flies, are both subject to diseases; which, left unto themselves, are most free from any such encumbrances.
  • (falconry, in the plural) A building or set of buildings where moulting birds are kept.

    • Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To shut away, confine, lock up.
  • * c. 1669 , John Donne, "Loves Warre":
    • To mew me in a Ship, is to inthrall / Mee in a prison, that weare like to fall [...].
  • * Shakespeare
    • More pity that the eagle should be mewed .
  • * Dryden
    • Close mewed in their sedans, for fear of air.
  • (of a bird) To moult.
    • The hawk mewed his feathers.
  • * Dryden
    • Nine times the moon had mewed her horns.

    Etymology 3

    Onomatopoeic

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The crying sound of a cat; a meow.

    • Verb

    (en verb)
  • (of a cat) To meow.

    • Interjection

    (en interjection)
  • A cat's cry.

    • Anagrams

    * ----

    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