descriptive

1 :  presenting observations about the characteristics of someone or something :  serving to describe a descriptive account

2a :  referring to, constituting, or grounded in matters of observation or experience the descriptive basis of scienceb :  factually grounded or informative rather than normative, prescriptive, or emotive descriptive cultural studies

3 of a modifier a :  expressing the quality, kind, or condition of what is denoted by the modified term hot in “hot water” is a descriptive adjectiveb :  nonrestrictive

4 linguistics :  of, relating to, or dealing with the structure of a language at a particular time usually with exclusion of historical and comparative data descriptive linguistics