shapely
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shapely
1325–75; shape + -ly; replacing Middle English shaply, schaply; compare Old English gesceaplīce (adv.) fitly
Explanation
Use the adjective shapely to describe someone whose body has an attractive shape. You might start going to the gym to run and lift weights with the goal of becoming more shapely. The word shapely most often describes a woman, but there's no reason you can't use it to talk about a nicely shaped man as well. You could describe a mountain climber you know as being physically fit, with shapely legs, or complain that fashion magazines are full of identical shapely models, with no variation of body types. Shapely has been used in English since the fourteenth century, from the Old English root word gesceap, or "creation, form, or destiny."
Vocabulary lists containing shapely
American Street
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Jazz
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Unassuming from the outside, the shop opens into a huge ark of mortar-crusted brick and ribcage-like beams, with long dining tables displaying shapely vases, pitchers, teacups and plates in shades of apricot, amber and malachite.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 2026
“It’s a Urania Klein,” my friend said, as he lifted the shapely antique typewriter from his car trunk.
From Slate ● Mar. 16, 2024
In the place of cabinets, it featured exposed wooden shelves stocked with shapely glass jars of potions and preserves.
From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2024
He says he took the above photo when "like so many others that day and on countless days before us, we rested awhile at Sycamore Gap admiring the tree's shapely tenacity and vigour".
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2023
He had bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers.
From "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
Raimi was capable of shapelier storytelling than this.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
The documentary could have been shapelier and better focused, but it packs lots of information and even more emotion.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 4, 2023
A leaner show with a shapelier through line might have been made by centering the series on any one of the journalists who hustle across the screen.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 18, 2018
There was one walk with the wireless operator to a smaller tramp in a distant dock, aboard which somewhat shapelier ship than the Bonadventure he had an acquaintance.
From The Bonadventure A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday by Edmund Blunden
The sergeant again discovered Mathias' footprints, together with others which were shapelier and lighter.
From The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Leblanc
It is hard not to fall in love with a beautiful, brilliant creature who changes genders while galloping across three centuries on a pair of “the shapeliest legs” in the land.
From New York Times ● Feb. 7, 2019
U.S. women, who are credited with having the shapeliest legs in the world, last week faced the horrifying knowledge that soon they would have to go silk-stockingless.
From Time Magazine Archive
In Hatfield Peverel, England, the Rev. Brian Mahood judged a women's ankle-beauty contest, then took off his socks and won the prize for the shapeliest male ankles.
From Time Magazine Archive
These jagged cliffs that flout the air, Harsh granite rocks, so rudely bare, Wise Vulcan's art and mine shall own To piles of shapeliest beauty grown.
From Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson
And not only the smallest, but also the shapeliest.
From Europe After 8:15 by Thomas H. Benton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
