It is not especially tall, rising to about 1.3 metres, but its proportions are unusual. Where most standing stones are markedly elongated or blade-like in profile, this one is almost square in plan, measuring roughly 0.55 metres by 0.5 metres, and it tapers only slightly towards the top. Its long axis runs east to west, which may or may not be significant; orientation towards sunrise or sunset is a feature sometimes associated with prehistoric standing stones, though the meaning, if any was intended, is long lost.

Standing stones of this kind are scattered across Cork and the wider Irish landscape, and most resist easy interpretation. They were erected during prehistory, broadly speaking across the Bronze Age, and served purposes that probably varied, whether as boundary markers, memorial stones, or elements of a ritual or astronomical practice that left no written record. What distinguishes the Caherduggan example is less its scale than its character: the almost cubic solidity of it, the gentle lean, the fact that it sits in ordinary pasture rather than on a prominent ridge or hilltop. It does not announce itself. It simply occupies the field alongside whatever livestock happen to be grazing there.