1. Without shape, shapeless.
1606. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. iv. I. (1641), 198/2.
| If here, for paper, | |
| I write (detested) on the tender skins | |
| Of time-less Infants, and abortive Twins | |
| (Torn from the wombe) these Figures figure-less. |
1892. W. S. Lilly, The Great Enigma, 287. Thus when St. Teresa in the fruition of that intimate union with her Divine Spouse, ‘in the centre of the soul, where illusion is impossible’ was instructed by the light which is the life of men, without words or the use of any corporal faculty, in mysteries ‘too sublime to be spoken of in earthly speech, for they are figureless and formless.’
2. Not bearing a figure.
1849. Rock, Ch. of Fathers, II. vi. 262, note. For the same symbolic reason which induced St. Osmund to ordain red for the colour of the vestments all through Lent, was it that the plain, figureless, wooden cross, borne in procession during the same penitential season [Passion time], used to be painted red here in England.
3. Mus. Devoid of figure (see FIGURE sb. 24).
1887. E. Gurney, Tertium Quid, II. 30. Objectively to prove the emptiness I speak of, and the amazing hardihood of Wagner’s claim to have advanced on his greatest predecessor by applying the principles of symphonic construction to Opera, would require technicalities; and indeed could only be adequately done by confronting hundreds of pages of his figureless counterpointless see-sawings with some popular samples of the closely-wrought movements of Beethoven, perspicuous through all their elaboration and with all their living threads woven into a single larger life.
