shape

English Online Dictionary. What means shape‎? What does shape mean?

English

Etymology

From Middle English shap, schape, from Old English ġesceap (“shape, form, created being, creature, creation, dispensation, fate, condition, sex, gender, genitalia”), from Proto-West Germanic *ga- + *skap, from Proto-Germanic *ga- + *skapą (“shape, nature, condition”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kep- (“to split, cut”).

The verb is from Middle English shapen, schapen, from Old English scieppan (“to shape, form, make, create, assign, arrange, destine, order, adjudge”), from Proto-West Germanic *skappjan, from Proto-Germanic *skapjaną (“to create”), from the noun.

The noun is cognate with Middle Dutch schap (“form”), Middle High German geschaf (“creature”), Icelandic skap (“state, condition, temper, mood”). The verb is cognate with Dutch scheppen, German schaffen, Swedish skapa (“create, make”), Norwegian Bokmål skape (“create”). Doublet of -ship.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: shāp, IPA^(key): /ʃeɪp/
• Rhymes: -eɪp

Noun

shape (countable and uncountable, plural shapes)

1. The status or condition of something

2. Condition of personal health, especially muscular health.

3. A graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external surface.
4. Form; formation.

   Your head is a funny shape, rather oblong.
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 blancmange, jelly, etc., or a piece of such food formed moulded into a particular shape.
8. (gambling) A loaded die.
9. (programming) In the Hack programming language, a group of data fields each of which has a name and a data type.

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:shape

Hyponyms

• contest shape

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Forms and shapes

Verb

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

1. (Northern England, Scotland, rare) To create or make.
   • 1685, Satan's Invisible World Discoveredː

     Which the mighty God of heaven shope.

2. (transitive) To give something a shape and definition.

3. To form or manipulate something into a certain shape.
4. (of a country, person, etc) To give influence to.
5. To suit; to be adjusted or conformable.
6. (obsolete) To imagine; to conceive.

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (give shape): form, mold, (rare) shapen

Derived terms

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

Translations

References

• The Dictionary of the Scots Language
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “shape”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “shape”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• HEPAs, Heaps, ephas, heaps, phase