descriptivistn.adj.

1898 Amer. Hist. Rev. 3 444 Not all members of the older school have limited themselves to such work as that of the descriptivists. A considerable number..have tried to go to the root of things, to show what essential factors have been at work in history.

1930 Monist 40 490 I think that most descriptivists would be quite content to say that the task of science is to describe events.

1952 Archivum Linguisticum 4 i. 11 The eminent phonemicist and descriptivist W. F. Twaddell.

1960 R. M. Hare in J. O. Urmson Conc. Encycl. West. Philos. 142/1 Stevenson's views did not..find favour with descriptivists.

2001 D. Crystal Lang. & Internet iii. 64 Descriptivists do not like the narrow-minded intolerance and misinformed purism of prescriptivists.

1930 Monist 40 488 The Theory of Relativity is more easily expounded in terms of the descriptivist philosophy than in terms of a more ordinary realistic philosophy.

1951 Mod. Lang. Rev. 46 261 Particularly in his [sc. Sapir's] descriptivist language researches, he was continually using the new material to throw light on problems of Indo-European and General Linguistics.

1960 R. M. Hare in J. O. Urmson Conc. Encycl. West. Philos. 141/2 Those views which hold that moral judgments are used to give some sort of information..are called ‘descriptivist’.

2011 Guardian (Nexis) 13 Feb. (Review section) 38 Critics of the descriptivist position tend to argue that it favours laziness and sloppy teaching.