literate

adjective lit·er·ate \ ˈli-tə-rət also ˈli-trət \

Definition of literate

1 a :educated, cultured

literate executives

b :able to read and write

What percentage of the population is literate?

2 a :versed in literature or creative writing :literary

literate novelists

b :lucid, polished

a literate essay

c :having knowledge or competence (see competent 2)

computer-literate

politically literate

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literately

adverb

—

literateness

noun

See literate defined for English-language learners

See literate defined for kids

Examples of literate in a Sentence

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

Recent Examples of literate from the Web

The Mountain Goats all but inhabit the sort-of ‘literate indie folk’ genre that umbrellas bands like The Decemberists and Neutral Milk Hotel.

— justin jacobs, Indianapolis Star, "U2, Ed Sheeran highlight September's concert lineup," 29 Aug. 2017
After fighting for the Confederacy, Samuel McAlister received a position as postmaster—a prestigious role singling him out as one of the few literate men in his town.

— virgie townsend, Harper's BAZAAR, "I Am a Descendant of Slaveholders. Charlottesville Demands My Honesty About White Supremacy.," 17 Aug. 2017
At least two people on a game show for literate people could not figure it out.

— ashley hoffman, Time, "Watch These Game Show Contestants Struggle to Figure Out the World’s Most Obvious Answer," 25 July 2017
And there are those who presume that governments will never be digitally literate or quick enough to take advantage, an early example being John Perry Barlow's 1996 essay A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.

— wendy grossman, Ars Technica, "New book explores how protesters—and governments—use Internet tactics," 23 July 2017
Young Finnish designers proudly adhere to socially minded values, and Finland remains a remarkably design-literate country, where the importance of design and design thinking is widely recognized.

— laura houseley, CNN, "Celebrating 100 years of innovative Finnish design," 6 July 2017
But the meme that Trump supporters have picked up and spread is a mix of fact and fiction, of genuinely outraged conservatives and the gleeful meme-literate arsonists who just like to see the internet burn with fury.

— abby ohlheiser, chicagotribune.com, "The Reddit user behind Trump's CNN meme apologized, but now CNN is facing backlash," 5 July 2017
Whoever did the Whataburger post was, um, a little more literate than some other pranksters, and cites Whataburger’s real CEO, Preston Atkinson, as the source of the info, for some extra credibility.

— robert philpot, star-telegram.com, "If you’ve heard that Whataburger is closing — just breathe. It isn’t.," 28 June 2017
In that task, Mac has succeeded, authoring a comprehensive and literate accounting of Niehaus’ life, one that appropriately begins and ends in Cooperstown, N.Y., where Niehaus accepted the Frick Award in 2008.

— larry stone, The Seattle Times, "Enjoyable new book on legendary Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus is swung on, belted deep," 27 June 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'literate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of literate

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

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 15th century

See Words from the same year

literate Synonyms

Synonyms

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

Antonyms

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

Near Antonyms

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

Other Literature Terms

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

literate

noun

Definition of literate

1 :an educated person

2 :a person who can read and write

Recent Examples of literate from the Web

But today, even the mainstream is porn-literate, porn-saturated, and porn-conversant.

— maureen o’connor, The Cut, "Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time," 11 June 2017
As with the internet itself, bitcoin’s first adopters were mostly the highly computer-literate and the highly criminal, followed by speculators.

— rob curran, WSJ, "Test How Much You Know About Bitcoin," 10 Apr. 2017
The letters on hand may reflect the gulf between the educated and non-literate, Heidelbaugh adds, but there are some examples that suggest letters had been dictated to others.

— roger catlin, Smithsonian, "World War I Letters From Generals to Doughboys Voice the Sorrow of Fighting a War," 6 Apr. 2017