shaping

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act or process of giving form to a material or object.

   The shaping of the metal panel required precise, repeated hammer blows.

   Careful shaping of the hedges gave the garden its formal look.

   Similarforming, molding, sculpting, fashioning

   Note

   Two separate histories meet in this spelling. The noun descends from Middle English schapynge, a verbal noun built on shape, while the verb form goes back to the Old English participle sċyppende. The noun also takes a plural. Mike Michael's Constructing Identities (1996) speaks of the "shapings and constrainings" of human identities, so what gets shaped need not be a physical object at all.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of shape.

   The committee is shaping new rules for the contest.

   Erosion is slowly shaping the canyon walls.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (is shaping, was shaping). As a gerund it names the activity but still takes a direct object (shaping the dough), unlike the plain noun, which needs of (the shaping of the dough). It can carry any sense of the verb, including the rare Scottish and Northern English "create" and the obsolete "imagine, conceive."

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A method in operant conditioning that uses positive reinforcement to build a behavior pattern through a series of small steps.

   Like climbing a staircase one step at a time, with a small reward on each step.

   The therapist relied on shaping to build the patient's social skills over many sessions.

   Shaping helped the rat learn to press the lever for a food pellet.

   Note

   Behaviorists use this for building a response that would never appear whole at the start. Each stage rewards a closer approximation of the target. Trainers speak of "shaping steps" and plan them in advance. Ilona Rodan and Sarah Heath's Feline Behavioral Health and Welfare (2015) advises aiming for 80% to 100% correct trials at each step. It also advises repeating a step only 5 to 10 times in a row before moving on.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The metal-cutting action of a shaper, a now largely obsolete machine that removes material with a linear, single-point cutting stroke.

   Like a carpenter's plane removing one shaving per stroke, but working on metal.

   Before milling machines took over, shaping was the common way to flatten a metal block.

   The machinist set up the shaping to cut a keyway into the shaft.

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