Russell's theory of descriptions has recently come under attack as being trivial and circular--Specifically, That it predicates uniqueness of definite descriptions only after identifying those descriptions as phrases analysable via the uniqueness criterion in the first place. It is shown that this criticism is quite off target. The confusion results largely from failure to distinguish the class of denoting phrases from its sub-Set, Definite descriptions. A few reminders are issued in hopes of facilitating the study and teaching of the theory (...) which will probably be remembered as russell's greatest contribution to philosophy. (shrink)