SHAPELESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does shapeless mean? 

• SHAPELESS (adjective)
  The adjective SHAPELESS has 2 senses:

1. having no definite form or distinct shape

2. lacking symmetry or attractive form

  Familiarity information: SHAPELESS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHAPELESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having no definite form or distinct shape

Synonyms:

amorphous; formless; shapeless

Context example:

a shapeless mass of protoplasm

Similar:

unformed (not having form or shape)

Derivation:

shapelessness (an amorphous or indefinite shape)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Lacking symmetry or attractive form

Context example:

a shapeless hat on his head

Similar:

unshapely (not well-proportioned and pleasing in shape)

Derivation:

shapelessness (the quality of lacking an esthetically pleasing shape)

 Context examples 

So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was rising to my lips.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What queer fellows your fine painters must be, to think that anybody would venture their lives in such a shapeless old cockleshell as that?

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

A thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had worn through the blanket-wrappings, and his feet were shapeless lumps of raw meat.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

With these words the Witch fell down in a brown, melted, shapeless mass and began to spread over the clean boards of the kitchen floor.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

There can, I think, be no doubt that this battered and shapeless diadem once encircled the brows of the royal Stuarts.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

It was a strength we are wont to associate with things primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength savage, ferocious, alive in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake when the head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the prod of a finger.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

She threw open a door as she spoke, and there, in a reclining chair at the further end of the room, we caught a glimpse of a figure all lumped together, huge and shapeless, with tails of black hair hanging down.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Beneath and around them blazed the huge fire, roaring and crackling on every side of the bailey, and even as they looked the two corner turrets fell in with a deafening crash, and the whole castle was but a shapeless mass, spouting flames and smoke from every window and embrasure.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)