« Shell minute, white, with smooth coiled apex and variced, solute, subsequent whorls. Whorls six, of which the apical three are smooth and in contact, the fourth commences to uncoil and the remainder are widely separate. Varices eight on the last whorl, with an anterior corner, slightly elevated; between the varices the shell is smooth and glossy. Aperture […] circular. » – C. Hedley: “The Mollusca of Funafuti. Part I - Gasteropoda”, Memoirs of the Australian Museum vol. 3(7), Sydney 1899, p.414.
 
The shell differs from that of hyalina Sowerby II by the colour of the protoconch (amber in hyalina), by its more uncoiled teleoconch, and by the shape of the radial folds (with their “anterior corner” noticed by Hedley, qualified of “hooked shoulder” by E. Garcia, 2004).