diff --git a/man2/mbind.2 b/man2/mbind.2
index 47642d950..f2181b594 100644
--- a/man2/mbind.2
+++ b/man2/mbind.2
@@ -174,7 +174,8 @@ and contains memory.
 
 The
 .B MPOL_DEFAULT
-mode specifies that the default policy should be used.
+mode requests that any non-default policy be removed,
+restoring default behavior.
 When applied to a range of memory via
 .BR mbind (),
 this means to use the process policy,
@@ -183,7 +184,7 @@ which may have been set with
 If the mode of the process policy is also
 .BR MPOL_DEFAULT ,
 the system-wide default policy will be used.
-The system-wide default policy will allocate
+The system-wide default policy allocates
 pages on the node of the CPU that triggers the allocation.
 For
 .BR MPOL_DEFAULT ,
@@ -389,20 +390,27 @@ is ignored on huge page mappings.
 
 The
 .BR MPOL_DEFAULT ,
-mode has different effects for
+mode can have different effects for
 .BR mbind ()
 and
 .BR set_mempolicy (2).
 When
 .B MPOL_DEFAULT
+is specified for
+.BR set_mempolicy (2),
+the process' policy reverts to system default policy
+or local allocation.
+When
+.B MPOL_DEFAULT
 is specified for a range of memory using
 .BR mbind (),
 any pages subsequently allocated for that range will use
 the process's policy, as set by
 .BR set_mempolicy (2).
 This effectively removes the explicit policy from the
-specified range.
-To select "local allocation" for a memory range,
+specified range, "falling back" to a possibly non-default
+policy.
+To select explicit "local allocation" for a memory range,
 specify a
 .I mode
 of