Etymology

Verb

1. To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
2. To shape; to form.
3. To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with .
   • 1905, Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst: A Biography, 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, Collectors Press, Inc., ISBN 1-888054-12-3, 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, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-12990-8, 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,