illiterate

Raised by a single mother in Korogocho, one of Nairobi's poorest informal settlements, Marius describes himself as "something like illiterate", and sees few options in a country where 40 percent live below the poverty line.

From Barron's ● Jul. 13, 2026

Because so many incoming students were numerically illiterate, the university added a remedial class for middle- and elementary-school math.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025

A high number of pupils at the secondary school are "functionally illiterate", meaning they have a reading age well below average when they start Year 7.

From BBC ● May 21, 2025

As Irish journalist and author Fintan O’Toole notes, by the mid-20th century, “the self-mocking joke was that most Irish people were illiterate in two languages.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025

Hassan taught him to read and write—his son was not going to grow up illiterate like he had.

From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

The unintended consequences of do-goodism by cultural illiterates.

From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2018

But these illiberal cultural illiterates instead wanted curtains for the offending Elizabethan play.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 19, 2017

Thus, contract laborers were excluded in 1885, immoral persons and anarchists in 1903, and illiterates in 1917.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2016

Female illiteracy levels in India are high; indeed it is estimated that there are more female illiterates in India than in the rest of the world combined.

From Forbes ● Feb. 23, 2015

The census of 1870 reports a total population of 38,558,371, and a total of illiterates, ten years of age and over, of 5,660,074, which is only 14-1/2 per cent. of the total population.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. by Various