shaped up or shipped out
shaped up or shipped out is the simple past and past participle of shape up or ship out.
Meaning of shape up or ship out
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)
- 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
Questions about shaped up or shipped out
- What is shaped up or shipped out the simple past and past participle of?
- Shaped up or shipped out is the simple past and past participle of shape up or ship out.
Words near shaped up or shipped out in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shaped up or shipped out (page history and authors); 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.
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