as in ignorant
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Recent Examples of Synonyms for functionally illiterate
Adjective
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The former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who opposed such an operation, sparred with two boosters: the current Fox host Mark Levin, and the Republican senator Ted Cruz, whom Carlson revealed to be ignorant of basic facts about Iran in a clip that went viral.—
Jon Allsop,
New Yorker,
27 June 2025 -
Maybe LLMs get us 80% of the way there without any oversight, but skipping the context and being completely ignorant of what the machine is doing is typically not a good idea, partly for the reasons that the panelists laid out.—
John Werner,
Forbes.com,
19 June 2025
Adjective
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Still, despite the glut of legal graduates, his shift in focus was an unusual move for an ambitious young man in a country where farming is seen as a job for old, uneducated or poor people.—
Carmen Abd Ali,
New York Times,
20 Apr. 2025
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The Catholic Church openly collaborated with the Ustaše, whose support came largely from young men with rural, blue-collar, uneducated backgrounds.—
Larry Luxner,
Sun Sentinel,
5 May 2025
Adjective
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Is there any wonder the Valley’s illiterate overlords are embracing it?—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
26 June 2025
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The Gospel authors, far from being community leaders preserving oral sayings for largely illiterate followers, were highly literate members of a small, erudite upper crust, distant in experience, attitude, and geography from any Galilean peasant preachers.—
Adam Gopnik,
The New Yorker,
24 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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Antony and Cleopatra’s benighted love story plays out against the surge of Roman power, and Caesar, sung with biting clarity by Paul Appleby, comes off as a modern Duce.—
Justin Davidson,
Vulture,
13 May 2025
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In that benighted era, smart and beautiful women like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Judy Holliday were perennially cast in jiggle roles: empty headed, screen-filling eye candy.—
Guy Trebay,
New York Times,
24 Mar. 2025
Adjective
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Those afflicted with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often behave in a manner which the unlearned (or uncaring) will immediately label as criminal.—
Killian Baarlaer,
The Courier-Journal,
6 Sep. 2024
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Although the 1973 commission’s report ran to 2,200 pages, some big lessons from 1973 may have gone unlearned—lessons that Israel needed to understand then and still does now.—
Uri Kaufman,
Foreign Affairs,
20 Oct. 2023
Adjective
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No untutored voice, nor even sound of rushing car disturbed the seemingly sacred stillness of the hour.—
Erin Alberty,
Axios,
14 Apr. 2025
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His savage, untutored mind suggested no better way than that of wreaking vengeance upon those who had wronged him.—
Liz Tracey,
JSTOR Daily,
21 Feb. 2025
Adjective
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Whether these findings map onto kids who are unschooled in the context of worldschooling remains to be seen without systematic longitudinal studies; anecdotal evidence from the parents in my research suggests mixed results.—
Jennie Germann Molz,
Scientific American,
21 Oct. 2024
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Some research also suggests that children who are unschooled underperform on academic assessments, particularly regarding reading.—
Ej Dickson,
Rolling Stone,
24 June 2024
Adjective
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Still, with this inspirational true story, the streamer stands to reach a much wider public than Perry’s typical audience, reminding how much of American history remains untaught and largely untold.—
Peter Debruge,
Variety,
6 Dec. 2024
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Until recent years, the story of how this period affected California’s Indigenous peoples had largely gone untaught or underrecognized.—
Anne Wallentine,
Smithsonian Magazine,
17 June 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Functionally illiterate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/functionally%20illiterate. Accessed 1 Jul. 2025.
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