\usepackage{enumitem} produces "Environment description undefined" error

Question

If I run pdflatex on the following:

\documentclass[class=minimal,border=0pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{varwidth}
\usepackage{upquote}
% \usepackage{enumitem}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,calc,chains,shapes,scopes}
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}

\begin{document}
\end{document}

I get no error. However, if I uncomment \usepackage{enumitem} then running pdflatex on the document produces the following error:

! LaTeX Error: Environment description undefined.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              

l.775 \renewenvironment{description}
                                    [1][]
?

Why is this, and what can be done about it?

Answer 1

From my comment to a proper answer. :)

With the option class=minimal, you are telling standalone to use minimal as underlying class, which is not a "real" document class and does not have the description environment defined.

You can either use the loadonly option for enumitem which will load the package but the three lists are not redefined, or use the default standalone underlying class, which is article.

Answer 2

When using custom classes (class=minimal), the package can be declared this way:

\newcommand{\description}{}
\usepackage{enumitem}