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
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
You know your Shakespeare, John, and he says most truly: 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.'
From To Mars via The Moon An Astronomical Story by Wicks, Mark
Indeed character consists in little acts, well and honourably performed; daily life being the quarry from which we build it up, and rough-hew the habits which form it.
From Self help; with illustrations of conduct and perseverance by Smiles, Samuel
To shape the ends of wool-skewers, i.e., to point them, requires a degree of skill; any one can rough-hew them.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various
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
The little cabin held an abundant store of shavings, because its normal tenant rough-hewed his logs into sabots.
From The Day of Wrath A Story of 1914 by Tracy, Louis
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
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)
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
After all, it is ridiculous wasting so much time and energy in rough-hewing our ends, when the shaping lies with other hands than ours.
From The Paternoster Ruby by Walk, Charles Edmonds
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
The city’s music, famed for rough-hewn virtuosity from blues to soul to techno, is the spring that waters “Adversity.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2026
At Superposition, John Rivas’s multimedia paintings and rough-hewn wooden sculptures depicting his kin are testaments to the importance of family.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2025
His vocal addendum is a wax stamp finalizing the rough-hewn collection of distinct voices.”
From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2025
Stunned, trying to take in what he had just heard, unable to speak, Joe reached out a hand and laid it on the rough-hewn cedar railing, steadying himself.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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.
