Re: "hewed to"

On 17 March, Sally Caves wrote:

This was from my on-line New York Times by Todd S. Purdum.  It seems to me
the writer meant "cleaved," a word I've always found curious, because it
means both "split apart" and "stick to."  It contains its own antonym.  Now,
it seems, "hew" has acquired an antonym as well.  At least for Purdum.

Hew: to cut down, to split or cut in half.

But "hewed to"? Anybody else seen the development of "hew" along the lines
of "cleave"?


My Webster's Third New International Dictionary  (1993)
has, along with the sense of cutting, the word defined as:
"adhere, conform, stick", (then follow a few examples) and
then it says: "often used in the phrase <following in italics>
hew to the line".

    The only time I remember ever having seen/heard the word "cleave"
used in the sense of "sticking to" was in the English translation
of the Biblical book of Genesis (chapt 2, verse 24):
"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife...".

    (BTW, the original Hebrew there uses the word
"davak" which has the sense of "to join together".)

Dan Sulani
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likehsna    rtem  zuv  tikuhnuh  auag  inuvuz  vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.