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• a  serving to describe or inform or characterized by description
  the descriptive variable
  a descriptive passage
• a  describing the structure of a language
  descriptive grammar

• The term itself can be merely descriptive or mildly offensive, depending on the user and the hearer; at any rate, it has become part of the American idiom.
• But a look at how independents rate those other descriptive terms suggests that her support among swing voters is lukewarm at best.
• Freely translated, the descriptive word or two in Miriam Makeba's name say: "There is a saying that after dinner, the Xosa kick the dishes.

• undescriptive
• prescriptive

News & Articles

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• LONGVIEW POLICE DEPARTMENT – CHILD ID PROGRAM AT LONGVIEW MALL
  WHAT: Safety first! According to the U.S. Department of Justice, an average of 2,185 children are reported missing each day. One of the most important tools for law-enforcement to use in the recovery of a missing child is an up-to-date, good-quality photograph along with descriptive information.
  June 7, 2013 - The Gilmer Mirror
• On her word
  Sixth-grader reflects on experiences at Scripps National Spelling Bee In round three of the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Friday, Divya Amirtharaj wasn’t thrown a bit when asked to complete a sentence defining the word “ogival.” “I knew it meant a pointed arch,” she said on Monday of the word pronounced oh-jive-al. The descriptive definitions put before her, however, included “bullet ...
  June 7, 2013 - Portland Tribune

Quotes

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• Harry Reid in FOXNews
  My staff has always said, 'Don't say this,' but I'm going to say it again because it's so descriptive because it's true,Reid said.
• Samuel Alito in San Diego Union Tribune
  In a May 2005 profile in The Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, Alito said, "Most of the labels people use to talk about judges, and the way judges decide (cases) aren't too descriptive. ...... Judges should be judges. They shouldn't be legislators, they...
• Mark Wahlberg in San Francisco Chronicle
  Wahlberg explains, "I met with Ang Lee on that movie, I read 15 pages of the script and got a little creeped out. It was very graphic, descriptive -- the spitting on the hand, getting ready to do the thing. I told Ang Lee, 'I like you, you're a...