Roughly rectangular in shape, it stands about one and a half metres tall and measures approximately one and a half metres by just over half a metre at its base, with its long axis oriented northeast to southwest. That alignment is common enough among Irish standing stones to suggest intent rather than accident, though what exactly was intended has been a matter of speculation for centuries.

Standing stones of this type appear throughout Ireland in their thousands, raised during the Bronze Age or possibly earlier, and their purposes remain genuinely uncertain. Some seem to mark boundaries, trackways, or burial sites; others may have had astronomical or ritual significance. The stone at Knocknahowla Beg sits in pastureland, which has preserved it from the kind of disturbance that development or tillage might bring, though it also means it exists in an agricultural landscape largely indifferent to its presence. Without excavation or associated finds, there is little more that can be said with confidence about when it was erected or why.