shape for

Verb

shape for (third-person singular simple present shapes for, present participle shaping for, simple past and past participle shaped for)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see shape, for.
2. (idiomatic) To head out to a particular destination.
   • We coasted that island one day until we arrived at the South Cape. Then, of course, we shaped for Stolboi, to the southwest, and we passed to the westward of it and landed on Seminov Island first. Then, from Seminov Island, we shaped a course to Barkin, and midway we were dispersed in the gale.1884, Jeannette inquiry. Before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the United States House of Representatives, Forthy-eighth Congress, →LCCN, page 803
   • We shaped for Pointe-aux-Orignaux, twenty-one miles down in a dead straight line, but twenty-eight by the course we actually took. The redoubtable Baie Ste. Anne lay between us and our destination. It is a bad place for any kind of craft in dirty weather or at low tide, and I would advise canoemen...1911 October, William Wood, “Alouette”, in The University Magazine, volume X, page 427