Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The condition of being unable to read and write.
- noun An error, as in writing or speech, made by or thought to be characteristic of one who is illiterate.
- noun The condition or quality of being ignorant or unknowledgeable in a particular subject or field.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state of being illiterate; ignorance of letters; absence of education.
- noun An error in the use of letters; a literal or a literary error.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The state of being illiterate, or uneducated; lack of learning, or knowledge; ignorance; specifically, inability to read and write.
- noun An instance of ignorance; a literary blunder.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable The
inability toread . - noun uncountable The portion of a population unable to read, generally given as a percentage.
- noun countable A word, phrase, or grammatical turn thought to be characteristic of an illiterate person.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun ignorance resulting from not reading
- noun an inability to read
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Our priorities are all wrong when a one-percent interest rate increase makes the headlines but a 10-percent increase in illiteracy is relegated to the back pages.
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A word of warning is needed against the assumption of some writers who would exalt the genius of Ruysbroeck by dwelling on what they term his illiteracy and ignorance.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913
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Ah, but such statistical illiteracy is confined to only a very few Britons and, um, quite a lot of Americans.
George Osborne's talk of percentages and billions will wash over most of us Aditya Chakrabortty 2010
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Wow George, did Reisman just say that functional illiteracy is easily fixed?
Television 2009
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Join us as we talk how illiteracy is pass down from generation to generation.
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I am not saying any illiteracy is acceptable, of course, but they are obviously using much different methods to compute illiteracy than the US Dept. of Education uses and the Dept. of Education does rank the States, one would assume, using the same methodology for all States.
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Health illiteracy is a huge problem for providers.
Wonk Room » What Does Specter’s Switch Mean For Health Care Reform? 2009
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Wow George, did Reisman just say that functional illiteracy is easily fixed?
March 2009 2009
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They probably are invested in "literacy" as a social ideal -- and I don't think illiteracy is an acceptable alternative -- and from this perspective they really aren't interested in Literature at all: Any port in a storm will do.
Genre Fiction 2010
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A second major pattern in the public's economic illiteracy is make-work bias ...
Economic Illiteracy, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
whichbe commented on the word illiteracy
The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
May 7, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word illiteracy
Our real illiteracy is our inability to create.
(Friedensreich Hundertwasser, painter and architect)
September 17, 2009