Used in academic, technical, or formal contexts to describe something that objectively describes facts or phenomena without prescribing norms.
This paper emphasizes descriptive analysis.
Descriptive grammar derives rules by observing actual language use.
descriptive science
descriptive markup
descriptive adequacy
From 記述 (description) + 的 (-like, -ive). The exact historical derivation is uncertain, but the word follows a common pattern for forming adjectival nouns from Sino-Japanese nouns.