Descriptive

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Descriptive \De*scrip"tive\, a. [L. descriptivus: cf. F.
     descriptif.]
     Tending to describe; having the quality of representing;
     containing description; as, a descriptive figure; a
     descriptive phrase; a descriptive narration; a story
     descriptive of the age.


     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Descriptive anatomy}, that part of anatomy which treats of
        the forms and relations of parts, but not of their
        textures.
  
     {Descriptive geometry}, that branch of geometry. which treats
        of the graphic solution of problems involving three
        dimensions, by means of projections upon auxiliary planes.
        --Davies & Peck (Math. Dict. ) -- {De*scrip"tive*ly}, adv.
        -- {De*scrip"tive*ness}, n.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  descriptive
       adj 1: serving to describe or inform or characterized by
              description; "the descriptive variable"; "a
              descriptive passage" [ant: {undescriptive}]
       2: concerned with phenomena (especially language) at a
          particular period without considering historical
          antecedents; "synchronic linguistics"; "descriptive
          linguistics" [syn: {synchronic}] [ant: {diachronic}]
       3: describing the structure of a language; "descriptive
          linguistics simply describes language" [ant: {prescriptive}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  43 Moby Thesaurus words for "descriptive":
     constructional, constructive, definitional, delineative, depictive,
     diagnostic, exegetic, expositive, expressive, faithful,
     glottochronological, grammatic, graphemic, graphic, hermeneutic,
     interpretational, interpretive, lexicographic, lexicological,
     lexicostatistical, lifelike, lingual, linguistic, metalinguistic,
     morphological, morphophonemic, naturalistic, philological,
     phonemic, phonetic, phonological, psycholinguistic, realistic,
     representative, semantic, semeiological, structural,
     symptomatological, syntactic, tropological, true to life, vivid,
     well-drawn