Describe

How to spell describe

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce describe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does describe mean?

1. verbTo give a detailed account of something in words, explaining its appearance, qualities, or nature.

Describe in a sentence

• The witness tried to describe the man she had seen at the bank.

• Please describe your symptoms so the doctor can assess them.

Where does describe come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin describere, which combined de-, meaning 'down', with scribere, 'to write', so its literal sense was 'to write down' or 'to copy in writing'. From that original idea of setting something down on the page, the meaning broadened to 'to represent in words' and even 'to trace out a shape', as when a compass describes a circle. English took the word in during the 1400s and 1500s, partly through the influence of Old French descrivre but increasingly modelled on the Latin spelling. That conservative re-Latinising is exactly why the word keeps its tidy scrib root rather than a French-looking form. The same scribere root powers a large family of relatives, including scribe, script, prescribe, subscribe and manuscript, all sharing the idea of writing; remembering that family fixes the -scribe ending in place.

How the word is built

• de- (down)
• scrib/scribe (write), literally to write down