- ignorant
- ignorant, illiterate, unlettered, uneducated, untaught, untutored, unlearned mean not having knowledge.One is ignorant who is without knowledge, whether in general or of some particular thing{
a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow— Shak.
}{the disputants on both sides were ignorant of the matter they were disputing about— Ellis
}One is illiterate who is without the necessary rudiments of education; the term may imply a failure to attain a standard set for the educated or cultivated man{you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly illiterate, uneducated person— Ruskiny
}but when directly applied to a person it usually implies inability to read or write{iilliterate in the sense that they could not read or write, or . . . functionally illiterate in the sense that they were unable to understand what they read— Kandeiy}}
}{illiterate voters
}When applied to words or alterations of words or grammatical constructions, it implies violation of the usage of educated men or a status below that of the standard English of the day; thus, most teachers would stigmatize the expression "I seen it" as illiterate. The word, however, is often used merely as a contemptuous description of one (as a person, an utterance, or a letter) that shows little evidence of education or cultivation{his speech is positively illiterate
}or shows inability to read and understand{it is common knowledge that our professional students and candidates for the Ph.D. are illiterate. One thing you learn very quickly in teaching students at the loftiest levels of education is that they cannot read— Hutchins
}One is unlettered who is without the learning that is to be gained through the knowledge of books. Often it implies being able to read and write, but with no facility in either reading or writing{unlettered peasants
}but sometimes it implies general ignorance or illiteracy{his addiction was to courses vain, his companies [companions] unlettered, rude and shallow— Shak.
}One is uneducated, untaught, un-tutored, or unlearned who either has had no training in the schools or under teachers or whose ignorance, or crudeness, or general lack of intelligence suggests such a lack; none of the words, however, is used with great precision or in a strict sense{beliefs common among uneducated men
}{lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind— Pope
}{experiences of an unlearned man in the search for truth and understanding—fin'/. Book News
}{taught so many flat lies that their false knowledge is more dangerous than the untutored natural wit of savages— Shaw
}Analogous words: *rude, crude, raw, callow, green, uncouth: simple, ingenuous, unsophisticated, naive (see NATURAL)Antonyms: cognizant (of something): conversant: informed
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
