Shapeless comes from shape plus the privative suffix -less; shape is from Old English sceap, gesceap ('form, creation'), from Proto-Germanic *skapą. The historical chain includes Old English gesceap and Proto-Germanic *skapją. The quoted older sense, "form, creation," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for shapeless. The formation is best read as suffixal and borrowed: the word shapeless carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a adj, "lacking a definite or attractive form". English derivatives include shapelessly and shapelessness; related English forms include shape, shapely, and shapen. The result is a adj whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.