shapeup

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• shape-up

shapeup (plural shapeups)

1. (slang) a gathering of labourers, where employers hire them for day jobs.
   • 1974, Earl Conrad, Club, page 125:

     Even with all that prosperity there were bindle stiffs who didn't do so good: so he and the others dropped into a saloon, got a hundred bucks worth of small change, stepped back into the cab, drove over by the shapeup, that's what they said it was, a shapeup, and they threw money to the guys, laughed when they scrambled for the small change, niggers and wops, some poor yids, and some Americans too: they scrambled on the pier, scraping up a hundred bucks worth of nickels, dimes and pennies.

   • 1982, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The New Nightingales, page 95:

     Then I got work as a janitor. They had shapeups, like on the waterfront.

   • 2006, David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness:

     From Henry James's "look in" on Italians, Jews, and others, to muckraking travelogues of immigrant neighborhoods, to serving as guinea pigs in the development of intelligence tests, to shapeups outside factories in pursuit of work, to inspections on entering the country, immigrants were repeatedly scrutinized, tried, examined, and ranked against other races.

   • 2011, James T. Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, page 94:

     The equation of the shapeup with waterfront criminality , which eventually — with a very large assist from Pete Corridan — took hold in the public imagination, obscured a much more complex and variegated labor economy that was evolving throughout the port.

   • 2020, Peter B. Doeringer, ‎Michael J. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis:

     The company can institute a "shapeup,” hiring each day from a gang of workers appearing at the gate a number equal to the number of its work stations.

2. (by extension) A regular meeting by a criminal organization in which jobs are assigned.
   • 2002, Gene Mustain, ‎Jerry Capeci, Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti, page xiii:

     Worse, he required his men to attend weekly shapeups at his social club on a busy street in lower Manhattan.

3. A session or routine in which someone or something is repaired or put into better shape.
   • 1979, Bodywork & Painting, page 15:

     Before we began our weekend shapeup, the car looked like this: scratches and dents, broken trim, and a finish that was strictly dullsville.

   • 1996, R. Alan Fox, 500 Best USA Vacations, page 88:

     Here are best bets, from shapeups with time for pampering to rugged outdoor fun .

   • 2019, Gabby Rivera, Juliet Takes a Breath:

     Finesse a new one out of brown girl sex, confessions in composition notebooks, and poolside shapeups.

4. A hairstyle that involves cutting along the natural hairline to straighten it.
   • 2013, Quincy T. Mills, Cutting Along the Color Line, page 239:

     Even those who still came to the shop came only for shapeups.

   • 2014, Michelle N. Gibbs, Zion:

     His mom didn't do too bad of a job when she did give him the shapeups, but don't say that in Sam's shop because only men such as Sam and his crew can cut hair as good as them in that town.

   • 2016, Ronald Lee Fleming, 4Th Street Playground: The Mecca:

     Another former Mount Vernon resident, now living in the state of New Jersey, said he use to go to Modernistic Barber Shop to get shapeups.

5. An overview or outline of the major layout and shape of something.
   • 1990, Daniel Gonneau, Data Network Design Strategies, page 262:

     Shapeup (SU) does a high-level outline, or shapeup, of a newspaper edition, including how many sections are in the edition, what the sections contain, and so on.

   • 2006, Maciej J. Nawrocki, ‎Mischa Dohler, ‎Hamid Aghvami, Understanding UMTS Radio Network, page 98:

     The method of estimation of a transmitter effective antenna height depends on the type of propagationpath (land, sea), the length for land paths (below or above 15 km) and on the availability of data concerning the terrain shapeup (for the paths shorter than 15 km).

• heaps up, upheaps