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shaping

nounverbattested in dialogue

The action of the verb to shape.

noun

  1. 1

    The action of the verb to shape.

    In contrast to the (to be sure, productive) shapings and constrainings of human identities in the sociotechnical network, here we have an expansion of identity.

  2. 2

    The action of the verb to shape. A method of positive reinforcement of behaviour patterns in a series of steps in operant conditioning.

    In general, it's a good idea to know ahead of time what your shaping steps will be and try to get 80% to 100% correct trials during the shaping steps and repeat each step for only 5 to 10 trials in a row.

  3. 3

    The action of the verb to shape. The action of the metal-cutting machine called a shaper, which uses linear single-point cutting. It is largely but not entirely obsolete.

Etymology

From Middle English schapynge, equivalent to shape + -ing.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of shapepresent participle and gerund of shape

Etymology

From Middle English shapinge, shapende, schapende, schappande, from Old English sċyppende, sċeppende, from Proto-West Germanic *skappjandī, from Proto-Germanic *skapjandz, present participle of Proto-Germanic *skapjaną (“to form, shape, create”), equivalent to shape + -ing.

Forms

plural
shapings
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).