• enPR: shāp, IPA: /ʃeɪp/

shape

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 in terms of its arrangement in space, especially its outline; often a basic geometric two-dimensional figure.

   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. (cookery, 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.

• German: Zustand, Form
• Italian: condizione, stato
• Portuguese: condição, estado
• Russian: фо́рма
• Spanish: forma, estado

• German: Form
• Italian: forma
• Portuguese: estado
• Russian: фо́рма
• Spanish: forma

• French: forme
• German: Form
• Italian: forma, sagoma
• Portuguese: forma
• Russian: фо́рма
• Spanish: forma

• French: forme
• German: Form
• Italian: forma, figura
• Portuguese: forma
• Russian: фо́рма

shape (shapes, present participle shaping; past shaped, past participle shaped)

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.

   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.

   • Grace shaped her limbs, and beauty decked her face.

4. (of a country, person, etc) To give influence to.
5. To suit; to be adjusted or conformable.
6. (obsolete) To imagine; to conceive.
   • c. 1603–1604, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene iii]:

     Oft my jealousy / Shapes faults that are not.

• (give shape) form, mold

• French: donner une forme, former
• German: formen
• Italian: modellare, dare forma, plasmare, sagomare, formare
• Portuguese: modelar
• Spanish: modelar, formar