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)
But it has been written by a wise man, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” and Tom Blount was soon to find out its truth.
From The Vast Abyss The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam by Fenn, George Manville
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)
But "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."
From Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine by Waugh, Edwin
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
When Henderson was designing the living room of his Hillsdale house, he painted the wall paneling a greenish gray, but left the original rough-hewed wood posts and beams unfinished for their rich visual character.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 8, 2024
The Los Angeles depicted in “This Fool” was a rough-hewed paradise.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 21, 2024
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
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
The powers of nature are now otherwise employed than in rough-hewing the surface of the globe.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 by Various
Quarrying, as I have said, implied cutting out and rough-hewing blocks exactly of the right dimensions for certain portions of a building or a piece of statuary.
From The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by Symonds, John Addington
He is prone to lose sight of the fact that without their clearing of the ground and rough-hewing of the foundation-stones, the stately edifice of later builders could not have been erected.
From Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley by Huxley, T. 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 Fitzwilliam Museum’s moving “War Craft” exhibition memorializes a unique popular art, rough-hewn from found objects and made by men killing time in the field or, afterward, as souvenirs of survival.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
He’s rough-hewn, simple, hardworking, not immune to the impermanent nature of the world but brought up short when that world goes awry; Mr. Edgerton has to give emotional depth to a laconic character.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025
His vocal addendum is a wax stamp finalizing the rough-hewn collection of distinct voices.”
From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2025
His brooding, rough-hewn features were recognizable worldwide, his name a rallying cry from South America to the Vatican.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2024
He’s rough-hewn like a jock, but his multiple piercings tell me he’s not.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
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.
