It is oval in plan, aligned roughly north to south, and has been worn smooth in the way that only centuries of indifferent livestock can manage. The indignity is hard to argue with, but it does nothing to diminish what the stone almost certainly is.

The boulder bears a notable resemblance to the Turoe Stone, one of the most celebrated Iron Age carved stones in Ireland, found only a few kilometres away in Co. Galway. The Turoe Stone is famous for its swirling La Tène decoration, a style of abstract curvilinear ornament associated with Celtic artistic traditions that flourished across Europe from around the fifth century BC. This Carrowmore stone shares the same low, rounded, domed profile but is smaller and carries no decoration at all. Whether it was always plain or was simply never carved is not recorded. Adding to the interest of the immediate area, a second possible standing stone sits roughly ten metres to the south-south-east, which raises the possibility that this was once a more deliberate arrangement in the landscape rather than an isolated survival.