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

Etymology

Origin of documentary

First recorded in 1795–1805; document + -ary

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 If you make a documentary about the U.S. Library of Congress, you'll be documenting lots of historical documents.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

"I get into the hotel room, it's really dark, and then I see that it's just him," she tells the documentary.

From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026

That day, walking home from a particularly sad documentary interview, I wasn’t sure it was helping.

From Salon ● Jul. 28, 2026

“My work has to do with recycling,” she told a documentary crew in the 1970s.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026

In 2019, he presented the BBC NI television documentary Links to the Past: Pioneers of Ulster Golf.

From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2026

In January 2013, an American documentary filmmaker named Laura Poitras was at her desk in Berlin, Germany, when she got a mysterious email.

From "Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War" by Steve Sheinkin

Outside of writing this newsletter, I work on radio documentaries with my partner, Stephen.

From Salon ● Jul. 28, 2026

I was upset that I’d never be able to thank her, to laud her for pushing students out of their comfort zones by showing them documentaries that were not easily palatable.

From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2026

The re-created history, which is where many historical documentaries fail, looks good, and the scenes the writers conjure up are well done, if verging sometimes on melodrama.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2026

Orton: I’ve done a lot of documentaries with people who learn hard things or process hard things on camera, and it can get sticky.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2026

The perfect Hideo I’d pieced together from years of documentaries and articles doesn’t seem like the one I’d just met—condescending, unsmiling, cold, the reality of a mythical figure I’d built up in my head.

From "Warcross" by Marie Lu

Related Words

• broadcast
• feature
• film
• narrative