The shell is moderately large (maximum length 95 nun), heavy, and rhomboid. The spire is high, consisting of one and one-half nuclear whorls and seven convex postnuclear whorls. The suture is impressed. The body whorl is solid and very heavy. The aperture is subcircular, with an anal sulcus delimited parietally by a strong, knobby spiral ridge. The outer apertural lip is erect and marginally finely dentate, its interior Urate. The columellar lip is detached and moderately erect. The siphonal canal is short, bent to the left, tapering anteriorly, and distally recurved.
The body whorl bears three foliose varices. Other axial ornamentation consists of a single very large, knoblike intervarical ridge. Spiral sculpture consists of cords of varying degrees of strength and fine, scabrous threads. Where the cords intersect the varices, stout, straight, moderated long, foliated spires are developed. The shoulder spine, the longest, is bent posteriorly. The second and third spines are progressively more dorsally oriented, forming, as in C. brunnea, an arc of spines. Below this arc, on the body, is a pair of straight spines. Two moderately long, straight spines are developed on the canal.
Shell color is light brown, with darker rusty brown on the spiral elements. The aperture is porcelaneous white.

Apparently endemic in the Hawaiian Island chain.