Word.ws English Dictionary

shape up or ship out

shape up or ship out verb: to either improve one's behavior or else be required to leave; to either improve one's performance in an activity or else withdraw from that activity completely.

Verb

shape up or ship out (third-person singular simple present shapes up or ships out, present participle shaping up or shipping out, simple past and past participle shaped up or shipped out)

  1. (idiomatic) To either improve one's behavior or else be required to leave; to either improve one's performance in an activity or else withdraw from that activity completely.
    • Portions of those letters quoted by Bruccoli indicate that though Hemingway could be sympathetic, he used a lot of ink telling Fitzgerald to shape up or ship out.1978 April 3, R. Z. Sheppard, “The Far Side of Friendship (review of Scott and Ernest by Matthew J. Bruccoli)”, in Time

Forms of shape up or ship out

third-person singular presentshapes up or ships out
present participleshaping up or shipping out
past participleshaped up or shipped out
pastshaped up or shipped out

Questions about shape up or ship out

What does shape up or ship out mean?
Shape up or ship out means to either improve one's behavior or else be required to leave; to either improve one's performance in an activity or else withdraw from that activity completely.
What part of speech is shape up or ship out?
Shape up or ship out is a verb.
What is the past tense of shape up or ship out?
The past tense of shape up or ship out is shaped up or shipped out.

Words near shape up or ship out in the dictionary

  1. shape poetry
  2. shape rotator
  3. shape rotators
  4. shape sorter
  5. shape up
  6. shape up or ship out
  7. shape-note
  8. shape-shift
  9. shape-shifted
  10. shape-shifter
  11. shape-shifters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shape up or ship out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shape up or ship out.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shape up or ship out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shape_up_or_ship_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.