different between hew vs gash

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

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æ?/
• Rhymes: -æ?

Etymology 1

Alteration of older garsh, from Middle English garsen, from Old French garser, jarsier (Modern French gercer), from Vulgar Latin *charax?re, from Ancient Greek ???????? (kharakt?r, “engraver”).

Alternative forms

• garsh (dated)

Noun

gash (countable and uncountable, plural gashes)

1. A deep cut.
   • 2006, New York Times, “Bush Mourns 9/11 at Ground Zero as N.Y. Remembers”, [1]:

     Vowing that he was “never going to forget the lessons of that day,” President Bush paid tribute last night to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, laying wreaths at ground zero, attending a prayer service at St. Paul’s Chapel and making a surprise stop at a firehouse and a memorial museum overlooking the vast gash in the ground where the twin towers once stood.

2. (slang, vulgar) A vulva.
   • 1959, William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 50th anniversary edition (2009), p. 126:

     “Oh Gertie it’s true. It’s all true. They’ve got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing.”

3. (slang, offensive) A woman
   • 1934, James T. Farrell, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, Ch. 19:

     "Will you bastards quit singing the blues? You're young, and there's plenty of gash in the world, and the supply of moon goes on forever," Simonsky said.

4. (slang, British Royal Navy) Rubbish, spare kit
5. (slang) Rubbish on board an aircraft
6. (slang) Unused film or sound during film editing
7. (slang) Poor quality beer, usually watered down.

Translations

Adjective

gash (comparative more gash, superlative most gash)

1. (slang) Of poor quality; makeshift; improvised; temporary; substituted.

Verb

gash (third-person singular simple present gashes, present participle gashing, simple past and past participle gashed)

1. To make a deep, long cut; to slash.

Translations

Etymology 2

From ghastful, by association with gash.

Adjective

gash (comparative more gash, superlative most gash)

1. (Britain, Scotland, dialect) ghastly; hideous

Related terms

• gashful
• gashly

Anagrams

• HAGS, hags, shag