noun
definition
(grammar) An adjective (or other descriptive word)
adjective
definition
Of, relating to, or providing a description.
definition
(grammar) Of an adjective, stating an attribute of the associated noun (as heavy in the heavy dictionary).
definition
Describing the structure, grammar, vocabulary and actual use of a language.
definition
Describing and seeking to classify, as opposed to normative or prescriptive.
Examples of descriptive in a Sentence
The descriptive parts of my novel found favour.
The former is particular or descriptive; the latter is general.
Herculano had greater book learning than Scott, but lacked descriptive talent and skill in dialogue.
His poems, which embody the national genius, have passed into the very life of the people; particularly is he happy in the pieces descriptive of rural life.
Emil Abranyi adopts a rather romantic style, but his Nagypentek (Good Friday) is an excellent descriptive sketch.
Klaproth, and especially by Berzelius; these chemists are to be regarded as the pioneers in this branch of descriptive chemistry.
Palmer; Elements of Physiological Psychology (1889, rewritten as Outlines of Physiological Psychology, in 1890); Primer of Psychology (1894); Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory (1894); and Outlines of Descriptive Psychology (1898); in a "system of philosophy," Philosophy of the Mind (1891); Philosophy of Knowledge (1897); A Theory of Reality (1899); Philosophy of Conduct (1902); and Philosophy of Religion (2 vols., 1905); In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908); and Knowledge, Life and Reality (1909).
His characteristics in his prose fiction and descriptive work are not very different from those of his poetry.
On the other hand, his descriptive power in treating of nature shows far more art than the Trianin school ever attained.
He also supervised the compilation of a comprehensive series of volumes by various writers on Descriptive Sociology, of which by 1881 eight parts on different racial areas had been published (at a loss to him of £3250) as the result of fourteen years of labour.
Thomson, Sound (5th ed., 1909), contains a descriptive account of the chief phenomena, and an elementary mathematical treatment.
Sam, a causeway, generally descriptive of the old Roman paved roads - Talsarn, Sarnau, Sarn Badrig.
Of the academical poets Johan Gabriel Oxenstjerna (1750-1818), the nephew of Gyllenborg, was a descriptive idyllist of grace.
Amongst his economic works may be mentioned Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), written in a popular style, and descriptive rather than theoretical, but wonderfully fresh and original in treatment and full of suggestiveness, a Primer on Political Economy (1878), The State in Relation to Labour (1882), and two works published after his death, namely, Methods of Social Reform and Investigations in Currency and Finance, containing papers that had appeared separately during his lifetime.
All these poems, like the Elegiada of Luis Pereira Brandao on the disaster of Al Kasr, the Primeiro cerco de Diu of the chronicler Francisco de Andrade, and even the AfTonso Africano of Quevedo, for all its futile allegory, contain striking episodes and vigorous and well-coloured descriptive passages, but they cannot compare with The Lusiads in artistic value.
Goes (q.v.) wrote a number of other historical and descriptive works in Portuguese and Latin, some of which were printed during his residence in the Low Countries and contributed to his deserved fame.
The Ulyssea of Gabriel Pereira de Castro describes the foundation of Lisbon by Ulysses, but, notwithstanding its plagiarism of The Lusiads and faults of taste, these ten cantos contain some masterly descriptive passages, and the ottava rima shows a harmony and flexibility to which even Camoens rarely attained; but this praise cannot be extended to the tiresome Ulyssipo of Sousa de Macedo.
The later portion of The City and the Mountains, for the truth and beauty of its descriptive passages, is highly praised, and many pages are already quoted as classic examples of Portuguese prose.
As a descriptive title Leviticus, " the Levitical book," is not inappropriate to the contents of the book, which exhibits an elaborate system of sacrificial worship. In this connexion, however, the term " Levitical " is used in a perfectly general sense, since there is no reference in the book itself to the Levites themselves.
The mathematical influence of Monge had two sides represented respectively by his two great works, the Geometric descriptive and the Application de l'analyse a la geometrie.
The philosophy of history differs, it will be observed, from the purely scientific or descriptive studies covered by the general title of sociology.
A portion of the original Holland was submerged by a great inundation in 1421, and its modern appellation of Biesbosch (reed-forest) is descriptive of what must have been the condition of the entire district in early times.
From 1615 to 1621 he was governor of the English colony on the north side of Conception Bay in Newfoundland; he explored the island, made the first English map of it (published in 1625), and wrote a descriptive tract entitled A Briefe Discourse of the Newfoundland (Edinburgh, 1620) to promote the colonization of the island by Scotsmen.
The division is in many respects convenient for descriptive purposes, but recent researches show that it does not accurately represent the relationships of the different families.
Space can always be had for more dock room by reclaiming the east sands, where in the 17th and 18th centuries Leith Races were held, the theme of a humorous descriptive poem by Robert Fergusson..
The letters or symbols descriptive of each denomination are usually placed after or (in actual calculations) above the figures denoting the numbers of the corresponding units; but in a few cases, e.g.
To take the Echinoidea now living, and to divide them into Endocyclica and Exocyclica, Branchiate and Abranchiate, Gnathostomata and Atelostomata, is easy and convenient; or again to distinguish as Palechinoidea those pre-Jurassic genera which do not conform to the fixed type of twenty vertical columns found in the later Euechinoidea, is to express an interesting fact; but all such divisions obscure the true relationships, and the corresponding terms should be recognized as descriptive rather than classificatory.
Trilinear and Tangential Co-ordinates.---The Geometrie descriptive, by Gaspard Monge, was written in the year 1794 or 1 795 (7th edition, Paris, 1847), and in it we have stated, in piano with regard to the circle, and in three dimensions with regard to a surface of the second order, the fundamental theorem of reciprocal polars, viz.
Other descriptive names for ovals and re-entrant branches cutting themselves may be used when required; thus, in the last-mentioned case a simple form is that of a figure of eight; such a form may break up into two ovals or into a doubly indented oval or hour-glass.
There is also a general resemblance in the number, characters and mode of succession of both series; so that, although individual teeth of the upper and lower jaws may not be in the strict sense of the term homologous parts, there is a great convenience in applying the same descriptive terms to the one which are used for the other.
This system has been objected to as artificial, and in many cases not descriptive, the distinction between premolars and canine especially being sometimes not obvious; but the terms are now in such general use, and also so convenient, that it is not likely they will be superseded.
Some authorities see in it a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic darasa (those who read the Book), or darisa (those in possession of Truth) or du g s (the clever or initiated); but more connect it with the name of the first missionary, Ismael Darazi.
Divination by means of flies was known at Babylon."' There are other cases of names compounded of Baal and an element equivalent to a descriptive epithet, e.g.
The second group as faithfully and closely descriptive of himself; descriptive too of a character purposely cloaked.
Yet he unquestionably ranks as the true founder of descriptive astronomy; while his splendid presentment of the laws of projectiles in his dialogue of the " New Sciences " (Leiden, 1638) lent potent aid to the solid establishment of celestial mechanics.
The descriptive branch found its principle of development in the growing powers of the telescope, and had little to do with mathematical theory; which, on the contrary, was closely allied, by relations of mutual helpfulness, with practical astronomy, or " astrometry."
The volume of text gives descriptive details and measurement of the spots and heights of the mountains.
As a theoretical or speculative science it is purely descriptive and not practical, being correlated on the one hand to physical science and on the other to history.
But the moral law must not be conceived under the form of an "imperative" or a "Sollen"; it differs from a law of nature only as being descriptive of the fact that it ranks the mind as conscious will, or zweckdenkend, above nature.
These descriptive terms are applied to one of the methods of divination employed by the ancient Hebrews, which, it is now generally agreed, consisted in a species of sacred lot.
During his tenure of this chair he published two volumes of a Course of Mathematics - the first, entitled Elements of Geometry, Geometrical Analysis and Plane Trigonometry, in 1809, and the second, Geometry of Curve Lines, in 1813; the third volume, on Descriptive Geometry and the Theory of Solids was never completed.
The funeral procession is headed by a number of poor, and generally blind, men, chanting the profession of the faith, followed by male friends of the deceased, and a party of schoolboys, also chanting, generally from a poem descriptive of the state of the soul after death.
After a struggling youth of great poverty, he published, in 1807-1809, a translation of Ossian; in 181 4 a volume of lyrical poems; and in 1817 he attracted considerable attention by his descriptive poem of The Tour in Jutland.
His real genius, however, did not lie in the direction of verse; and his first signal success was with a story, A Village Sexton's Diary, in 1824, which was rapidly followed by other tales, descriptive of village life in Jutland, for the next twelve years.
The poem contains some good descriptive passages, as well as some very curious indications of the state of zoological knowledge in the author's time.
The plan of Wallenstein was of long standing, and it was only towards the end, when Schiller realized the impossibility of saying all he had to say within five acts, that he decided to divide it into three parts, a descriptive prologue, Wallensteins Lager, and the two dramas Die Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod.
The Hebrew word mashal, commonly rendered " proverb," is a general term for didactic and elegiac poetry (as distinguished from the descriptive and the liturgical),.
The importance of Archaeopteryx justifies the following descriptive detail.
The ancient Catina was founded in 729 B.C. by colonists from Naxos, perhaps on the site of an earlier Sicel settlement - the name is entirely un-Greek, and may be derived from KaTlvov, which in the Sicel language, as catinum in Latin, meant a basin, and would thus be descriptive of the situation of the town.
The present name is derived from Bellum Quadrum, a descriptive appellation applied in the middle ages either to the château or to the rock on which it stands.