literate

¹lit·er·ate

adj \ˈli-tə-rət also ˈli-trət\

Definition of LITERATE

1

a : educated, cultured b : able to read and write

2

a : versed in literature or creative writing : literary b : lucid, polished <a literate essay> c : having knowledge or competence <computer-literate> <politically literate>

— lit·er·ate·ly adverb

— lit·er·ate·ness noun

Examples of LITERATE

1. She is literate in both English and Spanish.
2. What percentage of the population is literate?
3. The job requires you to be computer literate.

Origin of LITERATE

Middle English literat, from Latin litteratus marked with letters, literate, from litterae letters, literature, from plural of littera

First Known Use: 15th century

Related to LITERATE

Synonyms: erudite, knowledgeable, learned, lettered, educated, scholarly, well-read

Antonyms: benighted, dark, ignorant, illiterate, uneducated, unlearned, unlettered, unscholarly

Related Words: civilized, cultivated, cultured; cerebral, highbrow, highbrowed, intellectual; polished, refined, well-bred; academic (also academical), bookish, didactic, didactical, inkhorn, pedantic, professorial; informed, instructed, schooled, skilled, trained; homeschooled, self-educated, self-instructed, self-taught; briefed, enlightened, informed, versed; overeducated, polyhistoric, polymath (or polymathic)

Near Antonyms: uncivilized, uncultivated, uncultured; lowbrow, semiliterate, unintellectual; ill-bred, unpolished, unrefined; uninformed, unknowledgeable; uninstructed, unschooled, untaught, untutored; semiliterate, undereducated

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Other Literature Terms

apophasis, bathos, bildungsroman, bowdlerize, caesura, coda, doggerel, euphemism, poesy, prosody