Other forms: shaped, shapes, shaping
A shape is the outline or form that something has. A round shape, in good shape, take shape.
It is one of the first words a child learns and one of the most useful: shape covers geometry, bodies, and the state of anything — in good shape, out of shape, bent out of shape. As a verb it means to form or to influence: shape the clay, shape the debate. Note shapely; shape up, meaning to improve; and that the Old English word also meant fate and creation.
1nounshapeThe outline or form that something has.
“The biscuits were cut into the shape of stars and hearts.”
2verbinfluenceTo form something, or to influence it.
“Her years abroad shaped the way she thinks about the world.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
shape is a form.
Old English gesceap meant a form, a creature, and also fate or destiny, from a root meaning to create. Shape and the -ship in friendship come from the same making.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kep-
Middle English
schap
English, today
shape
Built from
From Middle English schap. From Middle English schap, 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA