documentary

American  

[dok-yuh-men-tuh-ree, -tree] / ˌdɒk jəˈmɛn tə ri, -tri /

adjective

1. Also documental pertaining to, consisting of, or derived from documents.

   a documentary history of France.

2. 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.

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noun

• documentaries
  plural

1. Movies, Television. a documentary film, radio or television program, etc.

documentary British  

/ ˌdɒkjʊˈmɛntərɪ, -trɪ /

adjective

1. Also: documental. consisting of, derived from, or relating to documents

2. presenting factual material with little or no fictional additions

   the book gives a documentary account of the war

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noun

1. a factual film or television programme about an event, person, etc, presenting the facts with little or no fiction

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nondocumental
  adjective
• nondocumentary
  adjective
• predocumentary
  adjective
• semidocumentary
  adjective
• undocumentary
  adjective
• documentarily
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• documentaries
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of documentary

First recorded in 1795–1805; document + -ary

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Explanation

A documentary is a film or video examining an event or person based on facts. The word can also refer to anything involving documents. The idea of documentary as meaning "pertaining to documents" came about at the beginning of the 19th century. Later, it came to mean a factual record of something. On PBS, you'll see lots of documentaries, about everything from baseball to war. Those documentaries are nonfiction films — they're showing true life. However, lots of fictional shows are filmed in a realistic documentary style. If you make a documentary about the U.S. Library of Congress, you'll be documenting lots of historical documents.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

documentary documentaries

The hit movie of the fall is…a three-hour documentary about investor fraud?

From Slate ● Nov. 2, 2026

The three-hour A24 documentary, co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, earned $10.6 million in the United States and Canada, Exhibitor Relations said.

From Barron's ● Nov. 1, 2026

This documentary is made for IMAX-loving, secondhand adventure seekers.

From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2026

The prosecutor also dismissed the idea that a documentary had caused the women to "re-invent" what actually happened.

From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026

One of the most famous envision- ings was in Carl Sagan’s landmark PBS documentary TV series Cosmos.

From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro

In many adventure documentaries, the audience expects the main characters to confront the possibility they might die, but they’re the stars telling the story, so of course that won’t happen.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026

In just shy of three weeks, “You Can See Everything” has taken a sledgehammer to this era of cobbled-together documentaries.

From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2026

In 2019, competing documentaries about the disastrous Fyre Festival took different approaches to paying its disgraced organizer, Billy McFarland.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2026

The director and producer spoke about his pair of documentaries arriving in successive weeks that take a closer look at two singular comedians.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026

We both stay exactly where we are, like in those nature documentaries where two animals are about to get into a fight, but first they just stare each other down.

From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender

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Related Words

• broadcast
• feature
• film
• narrative

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