rough-hew
Americanverb (used with object)
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to hew (timber, stone, etc.) roughly or without smoothing or finishing.
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to shape roughly; give crude form to.
verb
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to cut or hew (timber, stone, etc) roughly without finishing the surface
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Also: roughcast. to shape roughly or crudely
Etymology
Origin of rough-hew
First recorded in 1520–30
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It also engages the idea that some things may be hard-wired into our blood, echoing Hamlet’s phrase about how there’s a “divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”
From New York Times • Apr. 17, 2016
If some should find themselves by me the worse, And this my work prove not a model true, To that which I at least rough-hew, Succeeding hands will give the finish due.
From Fables of La Fontaine — a New Edition, with Notes by Wright, Elizur
To shape the ends of wood skewers, i. e., to point them, requires a degree of skill: any one can rough-hew them.
From A Logic Of Facts Or, Every-day Reasoning by Holyoake, George Jacob
To shape the ends of wool-skewers, i.e., to point them, requires a degree of skill; any one can rough-hew them.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various
In other words, a man decrees his own destiny and shapes his own ends by his actions, whether Providence rough-hew them or not.
From Tea-Cup Reading and Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves, by a Highland Seer by
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
