hew

1. (ambitransitive) To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.Examples: "Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder[…]"; "A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted."; "So that all men despised him in the streets, / He hewed the living rock, with sweat and tears,"ambitransitive

2. (transitive) To shape; to form.Examples: "to hew out a sepulchre"; "Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousnesse, ye that seeke the Lord: looke vnto the rocke whence yee are hewen, and to the hole of the pitte whence ye are digged."; "Wisedome hath builded her house: she hath hewen out her seuen pillars."transitive

3. (transitive, US) To act according to, to conform to; usually construed with to.Examples: "Few men measured up to his standard of righteousness; he hewed to the line."; "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."; "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, […]"UStransitive