The shell is largo (maximum length 120 mm) and elongate-fusiform. The spire is high, consisting of eight or nine convex postnuclear whorls and a protoconch of undetermined nature. The suture is deeply impressed. The body whorl is comparatively small, elongate, relatively slender, and fusoid. The aperture is ovate, with a narrow, U-shaped anal sulcus on the shoulder, close to the suture. The outer apertural lip is erect and coarsely dentate, with brief, ephemeral lirae extending from these teeth into the aperture. The columellar lip is detached and weakly erect. The siphonal canal is moderately long, narrowly open to the right, and distally tapering.
The body whorl bears three prominent, foliaceous varices. Other axial sculpture consists of four to six low costae in each intervarical space. Spiral sculpture consists of four to six low cords in each intervarical space and numerous, finely nodulose, major and minor spiral threads, these grouped into stronger cords. Where the cords intersect the varices, moderately long, slightly recurved, distally foliated spines are developed. On the body whorl, the shoulder spine is the longest and heaviest. Below this are, in succession, a small spine, another major spine, another small spine, and two moderately long major spines. Between the body and the canal, a region that is spineless in many species of Chicoreus, are two very small spinelets. The canal bears three major spines, these decreasing anteriorly in both length and degree of recurvature.
Shell color is ochre-yellow, overlaid by a deep brown imparted by the darker coloration of the spiral threads. Some dead-collected specimens arc rich red-brown. The aperture is white.

Greater Antilles to south-central Brazil.