The form of his visage was changed. --Dan. iii.
19.
And woven close close, both matter, form, and style.
--Milton.
2. Constitution; mode of construction, organization, etc.;
system; as, a republican form of government.
3. Established method of expression or practice; fixed way of
proceeding; conventional or stated scheme; formula; as, a
form of prayer.
Those whom form of laws Condemned to die. --Dryden.
4. Show without substance; empty, outside appearance; vain,
trivial, or conventional ceremony; conventionality;
formality; as, a matter of mere form.
Though well we may not pass upon his life Without
the form of justice. --Shak.
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.
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.
2. To run to a form, as a hare. --B. Jonson.
{To form on} (Mil.), to form a lengthened line with reference
to (any given object) as a basis.
God formed man of the dust of the ground. --Gen. ii.
7.
The thought that labors in my forming brain. --Rowe.
2. To give a particular shape to; to shape, mold, or fashion
into a certain state or condition; to arrange; to adjust;
also, to model by instruction and discipline; to mold by
influence, etc.; to train.
'T is education forms the common mind. --Pope.
Thus formed for speed, he challenges the wind.
--Dryden.
3. To go to make up; to act as constituent of; to be the
essential or constitutive elements of; to answer for; to
make the shape of; -- said of that out of which anything
is formed or constituted, in whole or in part.
The diplomatic politicians . . . who formed by far
the majority. --Burke.
4. To provide with a form, as a hare. See {Form}, n., 9.
The melancholy hare is formed in brakes and briers.
--Drayton.
5. (Gram.) To derive by grammatical rules, as by adding the
proper suffixes and affixes.