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
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
Every man had the right to rough-hew his own life.
From Swirling Waters by Rittenberg, Max
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
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)
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.
