shape

• enPR: shāp, IPA^(key): /ʃeɪp/

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• Rhymes: -eɪp

From Middle English shap, schape, from Old English ġesceap (“shape, form, created being, creature, creation, dispensation, fate, condition, sex, gender, genitalia”), from Proto-Germanic *ga- + *skapą (“shape, nature, condition”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kep- (“to split, cut”). Cognate with Middle Dutch schap (“form”), Middle High German geschaf (“creature”), Icelandic skap (“state, condition, temper, mood”).

The verb is from Middle English shapen, schapen, from Old English scieppan (“to shape, form, make, create, assign, arrange, destine, order, adjudge”), from Proto-Germanic *skapjaną (“to create”), from the noun. Cognate with Dutch scheppen, German schaffen, Swedish skapa (“to create, make”).

shape (countable and uncountable, plural shapes)

1. The status or condition of something

   The used bookshop wouldn't offer much due to the poor shape of the book.

2. Condition of personal health, especially muscular health.

   The vet checked to see what kind of shape the animal was in.

   We exercise to keep in good physical shape.

3. The appearance of something, especially its outline.

   He cut a square shape out of the cake.

   What shape shall we use for the cookies? Stars, circles, or diamonds?

4. Form; formation.
   • 2006, Berdj Kenadjian, Martin Zakarian, From Darkness to Light:

     What if God's plans and actions do mold the shape of human events?

5. (iron manufacture) A rolled or hammered piece, such as a bar, beam, angle iron, etc., having a cross section different from merchant bar.
6. (iron manufacture) A piece which has been roughly forged nearly to the form it will receive when completely forged or fitted.
7. (cooking, now rare) A mould for making jelly, blancmange etc., or a piece of such food formed moulded into a particular shape.
   • 1918, Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier, Virago 2014, page 74:

     ‘And if I'm late for supper there's a dish of macaroni cheese you must put in the oven and a tin of tomatoes to eat with it. And there's a little rhubarb and shape.’

   • 1978, Jane Gardam, God on the Rocks, Abacus 2014, p. 111:

     It was brawn and shape for high tea.

8. (programming) In the Hack programming language, a group of data fields each of which has a name and a data type.

• See also Thesaurus:shape

• contest shape

• Appendix:Forms and shapes

shape (third-person singular simple present shapes, present participle shaping, simple past shaped or (obsolete) shope, past participle shaped or shapen)

1. (Northern England, Scotland, rare) To create or make.

   Earth was shapen by God for God's folk.

   • 1685, Satan's Invisible World Discoveredː

     Which the mighty God of heaven shope.

2. (transitive) To give something a shape and definition.
   • 1932, The American Scholar, page 227, United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa

     The professor never pretended to the academic prerogative of forcing his students into his own channels of reasoning; he entered into and helped shape the discussion but above all he made his men learn to think for themselves and rely upon their own intellectual judgments.

   • 2013 August 3, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.

   Shape the dough into a pretzel.   For my art project, I plan to shape my clay lump into a bowl.

3. To form or manipulate something into a certain shape.
   • Prior

     Grace shaped her limbs, and beauty decked her face.

   • 2010 December 29, Mark Vesty, “Wigan 2-2 Arsenal”, in BBC:

     Bendtner's goal-bound shot was well saved by goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi but fell to Arsahvin on the edge of the area and the Russian swivelled, shaped his body and angled a sumptuous volley into the corner.

4. (of a country, person, etc) To give influence to.
5. To suit; to be adjusted or conformable.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

6. (obsolete) To imagine; to conceive.
   • Shakespeare

     Oft my jealousy / Shapes faults that are not.

• (give shape): form, mold

• beshape
• foreshape
• forshape
• misshape
• overshape
• shape up

• The Dictionary of the Scots Language

• ephas, heaps, phase