different between chisel vs hew

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?t??z?l/
• Rhymes: -?z?l

Etymology 1

From Middle English chisel, chesel, borrowed from Old Northern French chisel, from Vulgar Latin *cisellum, from *caesellum, from Latin caesus, past participle of caedere (“to cut”).

Noun

chisel (plural chisels)

1. A cutting tool used to remove parts of stone, wood or metal by pushing or pounding the back when the sharp edge is against the material. It consists of a slim, oblong block of metal with a sharp wedge or bevel formed on one end and sometimes a handle at the other end.

Translations

See also

• burin
• gouge
• graver

Verb

chisel (third-person singular simple present chisels, present participle chiseling or chiselling, simple past and past participle chiseled or chiselled)

1. (intransitive) To use a chisel.
2. (transitive) To work something with a chisel.

3. (intransitive, informal) To cheat, to get something by cheating.

Usage notes

chiselling and chiselled are more common in the UK while chiseling and chiseled are more common in the US.

Derived terms

• chiseler, chiseller
• chisel in on

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English chisel, chesil, from Old English ?eosol, ?eosel, ?ysel, ?isel, ?isil (“gravel, sand”), from Proto-West Germanic *kisil (“small stone, pebble”). See also chessom.

Alternative forms

• chesil
• chissel, chessil (dialectal)

Noun

chisel (usually uncountable, plural chisels)

1. Gravel.
2. (usually in the plural) Coarse flour; bran; the coarser part of bran or flour.

Related terms

• chessom

Further reading

• chisel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• chisel in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• chisel at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Schlei, chiels, chiles, elchis, lechis, liches, sichel

Middle English

Alternative forms

• chesel

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman chisel.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t??i?s??l/, /?t??is?l/, /?t??e?s?l/

Noun

chisel (plural chisels)

1. Any of several cutting tools used by stone masons.

Descendants

• English: chisel
• Yola: chisool

References

• “chis??l, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Old French

Noun

chisel m (oblique plural chiseaus or chiseax or chisiaus or chisiax or chisels, nominative singular chiseaus or chiseax or chisiaus or chisiax or chisels, nominative plural chisel)

1. Alternative form of cisel

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English hewen, from Old English h?awan, from Proto-West Germanic *hauwan, from Proto-Germanic *hawwan?, from Proto-Indo-European *kewh?- (“to strike, hew, forge”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /hju?/, [çju?]
• Rhymes: -u?
• Homophone: hue

Verb

hew (third-person singular simple present hews, present participle hewing, simple past hewed or (rare) hew, past participle hewed or hewn)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, Act IV Scene vii^[1]:

     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.

2. (transitive) To shape; to form.

   to hew out a sepulchre

   • Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn.

   • December 19, 1734, Alexander Pope, letter to Jonathan Swift

     rather polishing old works than hewing out new

3. (transitive, US) To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with to.
   • 1905, Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst: A Biography,^[2] Jennings & Graham, page 428

     Few men measured up to his standard of righteousness; he hewed to the line.

   • 1998, Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines,^[3] Collectors Press, Inc., ?ISBN, 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, Chester E. Finn, Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik,^[4] Princeton University Press, ?ISBN, page 28

     Faculty members and students alike were buzzing with the fashionable nostrums that dominated U.S. education discourse in the late sixties, […] These hewed to the recommendations of the Plowden Report, […]

   • 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

• behew
• forhew
• hewer
• rough-hew

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

hew (countable and uncountable, plural hews)

1. (obsolete) hue; colour

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Chaucer to this entry?)

2. (obsolete) shape; form

   • Whose semblance she did carrie under feigned hew.

3. (obsolete) Destruction by cutting down.

Anagrams

• weh