The form a thing holds in space — outline as identity; what stays when color and size are taken away.
Old English sceapan / scieppan (to shape, create), from Proto-Germanic *skapjan — the same root as -ship; the form a thing holds once colour and size are set aside.
The form a thing holds in space, the outline left when colour and size are set aside — what a thing keeps being made of matters less than what shape it is made into.