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 If you make a documentary about the U.S. Library of Congress, you'll be documenting lots of historical documents.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

Thankfully, his documentary has caught the attention of notable champions.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2026

Zegarra remains hopeful that he and Valencia will eventually be able to directly approach someone at Disney both about the documentary and about Valencia’s Quechua-language version of “The Lion King.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2026

Elizabeth Smart has been telling her story for over a decade, in memoir, onstage, and recently, in a Netflix documentary.

From Slate ● Nov. 8, 2026

Some of this year’s biggest films, including “The Odyssey,” “Avengers: Doomsday” and the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything,” clock in at nearly three hours.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026

A camera crew from the documentary series The March of Time visited Levittown in 1953.

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove

“The Greatest” is the latest in a voluminous array of books, documentaries and films created over the years about the larger-than-life figure whose fame intersected sports, entertainment and political and religious lines.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 9, 2026

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

As another taxing year nears its end, the popularity of “You Can See Everything” reflects audiences’ desire to go deeper than the surface level most streaming documentaries are content to skim.

From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2026

While in the United States, the pair took on a variety of media ventures — including a podcast, a television series and documentaries — under their multimedia company Archewell Productions.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 21, 2026

We’ve done three major things in our life now: this book and our two documentaries.

From "Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago" by LeAlan Jones

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Related Words

• broadcast
• feature
• film
• narrative

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