/di skrip"teuhr/ , n.
1. a significant word or phrase used to categorize or describe text or other material, esp. when indexing or in an information retrieval system.
2. Computers. a data item that stores the attributes of some other datum: a task descriptor.
[ 1930-35, for an earlier sense; DESCRIBE + -TOR, with vowel change and devoicing by analogy with similar L derivatives ]