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
adjective
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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
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of documentary
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 If you make a documentary about the U.S. Library of Congress, you'll be documenting lots of historical documents.
Vocabulary lists containing documentary
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Stargirl
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Academy Awards, List 3
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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.
Taylor was able to change his mind and, in the documentary, Sir Gareth encouraged him to keep believing in himself and praised his strong communication skills.
From BBC • Jun. 5, 2026
Somehow, though, Sara Dosa’s documentary on this matter, “Time and Water,” avoids playing like a funeral in waiting.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 5, 2026
In his new documentary, Jon Snow: A Last Big Story, he is seen uncovering an environmental disaster in Zambia.
From BBC • Jun. 5, 2026
Dosa has finessed this emotional-meets-elemental space before in her Academy Award-nominated 2022 documentary “Fire of Love,” about married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 5, 2026
She’d wanted to go to a local showing of the documentary Bridegroom instead.
From "When Dimple Met Rishi" by Sandhya Menon
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.
