Word.ws English Dictionary

shapes up or ships out

shapes up or ships out is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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)

  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

Questions about shapes up or ships out

What is shapes up or ships out the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Shapes up or ships out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shape up or ship out.

Words near shapes up or ships out in the dictionary

  1. Shaperos
  2. shapers
  3. shapes
  4. shapes for
  5. shapes up
  6. shapes up or ships out
  7. shapeshift
  8. shapeshifted
  9. shapeshifter
  10. shapeshifters
  11. shapeshifting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shapes up or ships 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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