Shell of small to moderate size (2 largest living species to 131 and 140 mm SL), broadly fusiform, slender to relatively globose, solid; protoconch with or without axial riblets on final whorl; teleoconch surface generally smooth except for occasional faint spiral incisions and very low axial ribs on first 1-3 whorls and transverse spiral cords on base and siphonal process; distinct, uninterrupted spiral bands, usually black, on all whorls, bands on body whorl varying in number from 4 to as many as 14, depending on species; outer lip medially convex, its edge sometimes bearing thickened nodes representing termini of spiral bands, its inner side with fine smooth lirae; adapical flexure absent in outer lip; parietal ridge at adapical end of aperture absent in earliest (early to mid-Pliocene) material, present and often prominent in all late-Pliocene to Recent species; entrance fold more prominent than columellar folds, rounded; no folds abapical to entrance fold. Radula of type species described and figured by Hackney (1945: 46, 48, pi. 1 figs 5, 6, as F.distans auctt., non Lamarck, 1822) and Wells (1970: 99, 100, text fig. 5).

Hollister (1957) differentiated Cinctura as a subgenus of Fasciolaria, principally on the basis of a prominent parietal ridge that emerges from within the aperture of the shell. Species he assigned to Cinctura also lack the inflected sutural ramp, sometimes with subsutural spiral cords, the resultant flexure on the outer lip, and often-interrupted spiral bands of Fasciolaria species and have spiral sculpture confined to the concave base of the body whorl and the siphonal process. We here elevate Cinctura to genus-level rank as a clade distinguished from Fasciolaria by a suite of characters equivalent to those of many similar taxa recognized at genus level in other families (e.g., Cypraeidae, Muricidae, Conidae).

The blue-gray color and relatively globose form of the shell depicted by Perry (1811) for Pyrula hunteria are features most often found in estuarine Cinctura populations of the southeastern United States east of the Mississippi River, but shells of similar color and shape also occur uncommonly in some Mexican populations. Features that distinguish the Atlantic and eastern Gulf Cinctura hunteria from the western Gulf C. lilium are numbers of primary spiral bands on the body whorl (4-7 on C hunteria, 7-11 on C. lilium) and absence (C. hunteria) or presence (C. lilium) of distinct riblets on the protoconch. Perry's figured shell has 7 primary bands, its protoconch is too small for inspection, and its type is not known to be extant (Petit, 2003:17), so its status as an "eastern" or "western" shell is ambiguous. Because of this ambiguity we have elected not to designate a lectotype based upon this illustration.