illiterate

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

In her second term, she introduced a constitutional amendment to reserve 45 seats in the legislature for female MPs, and worked to educate young women - in a country where 70% of them were illiterate.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2025

“Without laborers,” she writes, “who were often illiterate and almost never speak for themselves in historical texts—there would have been no Mughal Empire.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 5, 2025

"Digital technology is an opportunity we cannot miss," she said, warning that "those who do not adapt risk becoming the illiterate of the 21st century".

From Barron's • Oct. 9, 2025

In the novel, Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the Democratic presidential nomination to Buzz Windrip, who is described as “vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily discredited,” but wins the election in a landslide.

From Salon • May 17, 2025

The New Yorker sneered at the error, Ogden Nash wrote a poem about it, Walter Cronkite refused to say it on the air, and Strunk and White declared it illiterate.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker