SHAPING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Shaping

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ʃˈeɪpɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Shape v. t. (past shaped; past part. shaped or shapen; pres. part. shaping)

To form or create; especially, to mold or make into a particular form; to give proper form or figure to. "I was shapen in iniquity." "Grace shaped her limbs, and beauty decked her face."

To adapt to a purpose; to regulate; to adjust; to direct; as, to shape the course of a vessel. "To the stream, when neither friends, nor force, Nor speed nor art avail, he shapes his course." "Charmed by their eyes, their manners I acquire, And shape my foolishness to their desire."

To imagine; to conceive; to call forth (ideas). (archaic) "Oft my jealousy Shapes faults that are not."

To design; to prepare; to plan; to arrange. "When shapen was all this conspiracy, From point to point."

Shaping machine. (Mach.) Same as Shaper.

To shape one's self, to prepare; to make ready. (Obs.) "I will early shape me therefor."

Shape v. i. To suit; to be adjusted or conformable. (R.)

See images of 'Shaping'

Etymology of 'Shaping'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Shaping" Quotes from Famous Books

... chase, taking part in banquets, and mixing freely with the people. As illustrating this last fact a strange incident may be cited. One day the Emperor Yuryaku visited the place where some carpenters were at work and observed that one of them, Mane, in shaping timber with an axe, used a stone for ruler but never touched it with the axe. "Dost thou never make a mistake and strike the stone?" asked the monarch. "I never make a mistake," replied the carpenter. Then, to disturb the man's sang-froid, Yuryaku caused the ladies-in-waiting (uneme) ...

— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... in the attitude which the latter took up at the Foreign Office on all the great questions which arose, sometimes in a sudden and dramatic form, at a period when the power of Napoleon III., in spite of theatrical display, was declining, and Bismarck was shaping with consummate skill the fortunes ...

— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... to pass over a great deal of broken ground, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, before we found ourselves upon the side of what may actually be called the headland. Shaping our course westward we came to the vicinity of a lighthouse standing on the verge of a precipice, the foot of which was washed ...

— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... ancient district of the court laundresses. "St. Nicholas in the Bell-Ringers" is comprehensible; but "St. Nicholas the Blockhead" is so called because in this quarter dwelt the imperial hatmakers, who prepared "blockheads" for shaping their wares. "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery" is, probably, a corruption of two somewhat similar words meaning Muddy Hill. "St. Nicholas on Chickens' Legs" belonged to the poulterers, and was so named because it was raised from the ground ...

— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... effect upon practical life; and the operation of that part of nature we call human upon the rest began to create, not 'new natures,' in Bacon's sense, but a new Nature, the existence of which is dependent upon men's efforts, which is subservient to their wants, and which would disappear if man's shaping and guiding hand were withdrawn. Every mechanical artifice, every chemically pure substance employed in manufacture, every abnormally fertile race of plants, or rapidly growing and fattening breed of animals, is a part of the ...

— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

More quotes...