5. Orderly arrangement; shapeliness; also, comeliness; elegance; beauty.
The earth was without form and void.
Gen. i. 2.
He hath no form nor comeliness.
Is. liii. 2. 6. A shape; an image; a phantom.
7. That by which shape is given or determined; mold; pattern; model.
8. A long seat; a bench; hence, a rank of students in a school; a class; also, a class or rank in society.
"Ladies of a high form." Bp. Burnet.
9. The seat or bed of a hare.
As in a form sitteth a weary hare.
Chaucer. 10. (Print.) The type or other matter from which an impression is to be taken, arranged and secured in
a chase.
11. (Fine Arts) The boundary line of a material object. In painting, more generally, the human body.
12. (Gram.) The particular shape or structure of a word or part of speech; as, participial forms; verbal
forms.
13. (Crystallog.) The combination of planes included under a general crystallographic symbol. It is not
necessarily a closed solid.
14. (Metaph.) That assemblage or disposition of qualities which makes a conception, or that internal
constitution which makes an existing thing to be what it is; — called essential or substantial form, and
contradistinguished from matter; hence, active or formative nature; law of being or activity; subjectively
viewed, an idea; objectively, a law.
15. Mode of acting or manifestation to the senses, or the intellect; as, water assumes the form of ice or
snow. In modern usage, the elements of a conception furnished by the mind's own activity, as contrasted
with its object or condition, which is called the matter; subjectively, a mode of apprehension or belief
conceived as dependent on the constitution of the mind; objectively, universal and necessary accompaniments
or elements of every object known or thought of.
16. (Biol.) The peculiar characteristics of an organism as a type of others; also, the structure of the
parts of an animal or plant.
Good form or Bad form, the general appearance, condition or action, originally of horses, atterwards
of persons; as, the members of a boat crew are said to be in good form when they pull together uniformly.
The phrases are further used colloquially in description of conduct or manners in society; as, it is not
good form to smoke in the presence of a lady.
Form
(Form) v. t. [imp. & p. p. Formed (fôrmd); p. pr. & vb. n. Forming.] [F. former, L. formare, fr.
forma. See Form, n.]
1. To give form or shape to; to frame; to construct; to make; to fashion.
God formed man of the dust of the ground.
Gen. ii. 7.
The thought that labors in my forming brain.
Rowe.
