descriptionist

plural descriptionists

1. Synonym of descriptivist.

   Although he is a descriptionist, he is often more effective than Roberts or Lampman.

   1897, Canadian Magazine, volume 8, page 105

   3 more examples

   The author of the Waverley novels is another fine example; but he clearly takes his highest rank as a descriptionist—the painter of effects and appearances rather than of facts and of causes.

   1824, The Monthly Repertory of English Literature, page 344

   He was, on the other hand, the very opposite of a descriptionist in his physics, especially later in his career.

   1994, Dorothy Ross, Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930, →ISBN, page 134

   “Oh,” said one of my lunch companions, “you’re a descriptionist rather than a prescriptionist.”

   2002, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, volume 122, page 4

   Synonyms: descriptivist

2. human sciencesOne who subscribes to descriptionism.

1. not comparableDescriptivist.

   In effect, they say "a plague on both your houses" to the two sides in the prescriptionist-descriptionist debate.

   2013, William D. Nordhaus, Economics and Policy Issues in Climate Change, page 97

2. not comparablehuman sciencesRegarding utterances as primarily descriptive rather than as rigidly specifying a particular thing or kind of thing.

   The problem with the descriptionist account of date-times is that it gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences like that in CAESAR.

   2015 January 8, Leo Carton Mollica, “Explanation and nowness: an objection to the A-Theory”, in Philosophical Studies, →DOI

3. not comparablehuman sciencesOf or relating to descriptionism (theory of truth).