documentary
/ˌdɑ.kjəˈmɛn.tə.ɹi/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.31 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
5
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of, related to, or based on documents.
adj
Which serves to document (record or illustrate) a subject.
adj
Presented objectively without the insertion of fictional matter.
noun
A film, TV program, publication etc. which presents a social, political, scientific or historical subject in a factual or informative manner.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "a documentary film"
- "Just as there is a tradition of history painting, so there is one of history photographs — which of course are not documentary. They're posed as the world was supposed to be."
- "Fifteen documentaries are in sharp-elbowed competition to be among the five Oscar nominees."
- "If you watched Victoria Beckham’s lavishly produced Netflix documentary last October, you might have wondered why it didn’t even glance on the biggest elephant in Brand Beckham’s room[…]. But most big documentaries these days aren’t documentaries any more in the way previous practitioners of the craft might have understood the word. As her husband’s was before it, Victoria’s doc was a self-commissioned advertorial on which the subject also served as executive producer."
- "Such sequences draw attention to the affective appeals that environmental documentary typically makes, precisely by absenting those appeals."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Indo-European *doḱ-éye-ti Proto-Italic *dokejō Proto-Italic *dokeō Ancient Greek διδάσκω (didáskō)sl. Latin doceō Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-mentom Latin -mentum Latin documentumbor. French document Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusder. French -aire French documentairebor. English documentary From French adjective and (hence) noun documentaire, from document, from Latin documentum. Equivalent to document + -ary.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: -, documentum
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌdɑ.kjəˈmɛn.tə.ɹi/
- British English: /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/