documentary
Americanadjective
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Also documental pertaining to, consisting of, or derived from documents.
a documentary history of France.
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Movies, Television. based on or re-creating an actual event, era, life story, etc., that purports to be factually accurate and contains no fictional elements.
a documentary life of Gandhi.
noun
plural
documentariesadjective
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Also: documental. consisting of, derived from, or relating to documents
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presenting factual material with little or no fictional additions
the book gives a documentary account of the war
noun
Other Word Forms
- documentarily adverb
- nondocumental adjective
- nondocumentary adjective
- predocumentary adjective
- semidocumentary adjective
- undocumentary adjective
Etymology
Origin of documentary
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But, as the forensic evidence in a new documentary shows, Williams' words were a story concocted to hide the grim truth.
From BBC
“I had to look inside myself, look at my world and find something that wasn’t the Beatles,” he says in “Paul McCartney: Man on the Run,” a new documentary directed by Morgan Neville.
But as Neville’s documentary makes abundantly clear: while music lovers across the globe certainly mourned The Beatles’ breakup, few suffered its heartbreaking aftershocks to McCartney’s extent.
From Salon
A BBC documentary also highlighted allegations about the behaviour by former chief executive James Watt.
From BBC
“Ghost Elephants” is what filmmaker Werner Herzog calls the subjects of his latest documentary, acknowledging in his title that the animals may not exist.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
