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.
See Examples For:
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
Back of both men and circumstances, however, stands sovereign Providence, shaping our ends, rough-hew them how we will.
From Luther Examined and Reexamined A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation by Dau, W. H. T. (William Herman Theodore)
He must believe, with Tennyson, in a "far off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves," or with Shakespeare when he said "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."
From Church Cooperation in Community Life by Vogt, Paul L. (Paul Leroy)
"There is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will!"
From Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear by Gowanlock, Theresa
Are we to understand, then, that the architects thought of nothing but "hard utility," and that it was some æsthetic divinity that shaped their blocks, rough-hew them how they might?
From America To-day, Observations and Reflections by Archer, William
Columbus, a rough-hewed industrial town, had a sizable Black population, as well as Black schools, churches and businesses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026
The Los Angeles depicted in “This Fool” was a rough-hewed paradise.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 21, 2024
From the outside, with its rough-hewed stones flattered by brilliant sunlight and its windows overlooking the golden Dome of the Rock, the 200-year-old home in the heart of the Muslim Quarter is a Jerusalem postcard.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 27, 2023
Mr. Badalamenti’s name conjured the image of an old-world maestro, but he was in fact a wisecracking, golf-playing grandfather with a rough-hewed Brooklyn burr.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 12, 2022
Though this Platform be like a piece of timber rough-hewed, yet the discreet workman may take it and frame a handsome building out of it.”
From The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer by Berens, Lewis Henry
"We've got to have all sorts to make a nation, and he's the kind of machine that does the rough-hewing," he said.
From Elizabeth Visits America by Glyn, Elinor
We also are rough-hewing the cause of freedom for the slave.
From Project Gutenberg book of Historical Romance of the American Negro by Fowler, Charles H.
A simpler solution seems to be to assign the rough-hewing of the entire project of Cynthia, and its partial accomplishment, to the term of Ralegh's short occultation in 1589.
From Sir Walter Ralegh A Biography by Stebbing, W. (William)
The work of mere rough-hewing, of examination into the brute facts, is being done—has to no small extent actually been done—as it never was done before.
From A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895) by Saintsbury, George
The divinity, however, was taking its course, both rough-hewing and shaping the ends of the two.
From Stephen Archer and Other Tales by MacDonald, George
Mr. Sarris has fashioned for her a rough-hewn, splintery narrative voice, her English “a mess of high and low and everything in between.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Directors Shari Cookson and Nick Doob also shot the film and did the sound; it has that rough-hewn feel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
His vocal addendum is a wax stamp finalizing the rough-hewn collection of distinct voices.”
From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2025
Baldwin — who was cleared in July of an involuntary manslaughter charge brought by New Mexico prosecutors — plays a rough-hewn outlaw, Harland Rust.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2025
Beneath the snow they found a dozen huts and a longhall, with its sod roof and thick walls of rough-hewn logs.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
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.
