Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having no shape; formless.
  • adjective Badly shaped; misshapen.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Shapeless; misshapen; deformed; ugly.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Shapeless; misshapen; deformed; ugly.
  • verb Past participle of unshape

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective incompletely or imperfectly shaped

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Past participle of unshape.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word unshapen.

Examples

  • As the huge unshapen monster glared in on pale Frankenstein,

    City and Village 2010

  • Anderson likens sorrow to "the huge unshapen monster [who] glared in on pale Frankenstein."

    City and Village 2010

  • In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die.

    Adam Bede 2004

  • Nothing was discernible, save a flight of rough unshapen steps which sank into the yawning Gulph and were soon lost in darkness.

    The Monk 2004

  • Within one hundred yards of the bank of the river, and there alone, were seen the only timber trees we had met with in the country; if huge unshapen eucalypti, which would not afford a straight plank ten feet long, may be so denominated.

    Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003

  • Just as in other cases the substratum must be formless and unshapen-for thus the

    On the Heavens 2002

  • They passed on, Gollum in front and the hobbits now side by side, up the long ravine between the piers and columns of torn and weathered rock, standing like huge unshapen statues on either hand.

    The Lord of the Rings Tolkien, J. R. R. 1954

  • Our grandfathers 'temples, whether they stood on the banks of the James River or on the colder shores of Massachusetts Bay, were built cheaply for a scanty population: their material was usually wood, sometimes unshapen logs, and their sites, chosen before the people and the country had become fitted to each other, were afterward often needed for other uses.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880. Various

  • He bought that block; had it removed to his studio, and then went to work with his mallet and his chisel, and never rested till out of that rough, unshapen mass of stone he made a beautiful marble angel.

    The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young Richard Newton

  • For, indeed, they are unacquainted with the use of mortar and tiles; and for every purpose employ rude unshapen timber, fashioned with no regard to pleasing the eye.

    The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus Caius Cornelius Tacitus

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.