descriptive

UK/dəˈskɹɪptɪv/US/dəˈskɹɪptɪv/

adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,278 of 15,258mostly written

Descriptive means setting out in words what something is like. A descriptive passage, purely descriptive, descriptive writing.

In language study it is the opposite of prescriptive: a descriptive grammar records how people actually speak, while a prescriptive one says how they ought to. Dictionaries have been descriptive for well over a century.

Definitions of descriptive

1adjectivedescriptiveSetting out in words what something is like.B2
“Her letters from Africa were so descriptive that I felt I had been there.”

descriptive is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin descriptivus comes from describere, to write down, from de- plus scribere, to write.

Latin
descriptivus — containing a full description
English, today
descriptive

From Latin descriptivus (“containing a full description”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

descriptive in the wild

Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as descriptive ethics is an empirical investigation of people's moral beliefs.
Normative ethics
The theoretical basis for descriptive geometry is provided by planar geometric projections.
Descriptive geometry
Gaspard Monge is usually credited with the invention of descriptive geometry, called the "father of descriptive geometry" due to his developments in geometric problem solving.
Descriptive geometry
We now take for granted the periodic table, yet it took descriptive research to devise it.
Descriptive research
Hence, descriptive research cannot describe what caused a situation.
Descriptive research

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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