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

As the conversation gets rolling, she digs into her roots, explaining that her maternal grandmother was an illiterate indentured servant.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 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

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

On the other side, my father, he too illiterate, yet determined to have me drink from the well of ignorance.

From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane

Poetry — which prompts you with rhymes — is far easier to memorize than prose, so even illiterates could hear it and pass it along.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 18, 2020

The unintended consequences of do-goodism by cultural illiterates.

From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2018

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 statistician must not forget the item of 777,864 illiterates of foreign birth going to swell the grand total.

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