The shell is moderate in size (maximum length 80 mm) and heavily club-shaped. The spire is moderately high, consisting of one and one-half nuclear whorls and six convex to weakly angulate postnuclear whorls. The suture is impressed. The body whorl is large and goblet-shaped. The aperture is large, with a narrow anal sulcus, this delimited by a transverse parietal ridge. The outer apertural lip is crenulate and erect, most prominently just below the shoulder margin and decreasingly so anteriorly. The columellar lip is adherent above, detached and strongly erect below; a shallow, medial, longitudinal furrow marks the point at which the columellar lip loses contact with the body, and beyond this furrow, more deeply recessed within the aperture, numerous elongate denticles may range over the entire length of the columella. The siphonal canal is moderately long, open, essentially straight, and tapering anteriorly.
The body whorl bears three strong, rounded varices, each deeply furrowed on its receding side. Intervarical axial sculpture consists of a single short ridge, strongly nodose at the shoulder margin, and two similar but weaker costae closer to the newest varix. Spiral sculpture consists of numerous cords of major and minor strength, these weaker in intervarical areas, stronger on the varices, and nodose at the intersection of spiral and axial elements. A few spiral cords extend onto the canal. Where the major cord on the shoulder margin intersects a varix, a single blunt, spinelikc projection is developed.
Shell color is light tan. The aperture is white within; the apertural margin is either uniformly or interruptedly suffused with a golden-orange color. Some individuals show two faint brown spiral bands, one on the shoulder and one at the base of the body.

A distinctive population has been called Murex bellus Reeve, 1845. This form, found in Curacao, differs from typical M. chrysostoma in having sharp, upturned, hooklike spines at the shoulder margin and on the upper canal, and in having the crests of the spiral cords colored red-brown. In addition, this form generally reaches only 55 mm in length and has a darker orange-red suffusion in the aperture.

The southern Caribbean Sea, from Barbados and Tobago to Curacao and the northern coast of South America.