What does description mean?
A description is a spoken or written account that sets out the features, qualities, or appearance of a person, place, object, or event. The word covers both the resulting text or statement — a witness's description of a suspect, a novelist's description of a landscape — and the act of producing such an account. Description is one of the fundamental modes of writing, alongside narration, exposition, and argument: where narrative tells what happened, description tells what things were like. The word carries no particular emotional charge and fits comfortably in formal reports, casual conversation, and literature alike. It also survives in a slightly old-fashioned idiom meaning 'kind or type', as in goods of every description. Because precise description underpins science, law, journalism, and everyday communication, it is among the most practically useful abstract nouns in English.
A spoken or written account that sets out the appearance, qualities, or features of someone or something.
"The guidebook's description of the cathedral did not prepare us for its scale."
Frequently modified by adjectives of detail or vividness: brief, detailed, full, accurate, vivid.
The act, art, or process of describing or representing something in words.
"Description comes more naturally to her than dialogue."
In this sense the word is often uncountable, especially in discussions of writing technique.
A sort, kind, or class of thing (used chiefly in the phrase 'of every description').
"Shops along the quay sold wares of every description."
Regular plural. Used when referring to multiple accounts or instances of describing; rare in the 'sort or kind' sense, which normally appears in the set phrase 'of every description'.
"The three witnesses gave strikingly different descriptions of the vehicle."
Every police sketch, dating profile, and museum plaque you've ever read owes its existence to a word the Romans built from 'writing down.'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of description
Description entered English in the late Middle Ages from Old French, ultimately deriving from Latin descriptio, a noun formed on describere, meaning 'to write down, to copy out, to delineate'. The Latin verb combines de- ('down, thoroughly') with scribere ('to write'), so at root a description is literally a thorough writing-down of something. The same Latin root gives English a large family of words — scribe, script, prescribe, inscribe, transcribe — all tied to the act of writing.
Related word forms
How description is actually used
Neutral in register and appropriate in formal and informal contexts alike. In the sense 'a type or kind' (as in 'boats of every description'), the word sounds somewhat literary or dated but remains standard. It commonly appears with adjectives of extent — brief, full, detailed, vivid — rather than standing alone when precision matters.
Easily confused with description
A description conveys a subject in words, while a depiction is any representation of it, including drawings, films, or images.
Description presents static details of how things look or are, whereas narration recounts events in sequence.