The boulder is earthfast, meaning it is fixed in the earth rather than freestanding, and its southern edge lies almost flush with the surrounding ground while the northern side rises about a metre where the slope falls away beneath it. The slightly domed upper surface looks out over a stream below. It is the kind of thing you could walk past without a second glance.

The five markings are cup marks, the most common form of prehistoric rock art found in Ireland and Britain. A cup mark is simply a roughly circular hollow ground or pecked into a rock surface, typically a few centimetres across and shallow in depth. Their purpose remains genuinely unknown, though theories range from ritual or territorial marking to astronomical alignment. The cups at Carrigeenshinnagh are widely spaced across the south-eastern face of the boulder, each between six and seven centimetres in diameter and about 1.2 centimetres deep. The boulder itself is substantial, measuring roughly 3.55 metres along its west-north-west to east-south-east axis and 2.4 metres across. Whether the north-facing, stream-overlooking position was chosen deliberately by whoever made the marks, or whether the boulder simply happened to be there, is not something the stone itself can answer.