: to assume a definite or distinctive form : to develop and become apparent or established
The plan is finally taking shape.
Edison's tireless work habits took shape during his childhood … Paul Gray
The proto-planetary fragments crashed together, coalesced by gravity, and crashed again into other fragments, until they gradually took shape as the planets we know today. M. Mitchell Waldrop
… the first half of the century, before the modern medical system took shape. Geoffrey Cowley