as in ignorant
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Recent Examples of functionally illiterate
For 32 years of his life, the personal trainer was functionally illiterate.
—
Clare Mulroy, USA Today, 25 Feb. 2026
Stillman, like Goodnow and many other teachers, noted that AI can help tailor her lessons for students of different abilities, creating more-advanced activities for higher-performing students and more-basic tasks for students who are functionally illiterate in English.
—Jared Perlo, NBC news, 22 Dec. 2025
Clare Mulroy, USA Today, 25 Feb. 2026
Stillman, like Goodnow and many other teachers, noted that AI can help tailor her lessons for students of different abilities, creating more-advanced activities for higher-performing students and more-basic tasks for students who are functionally illiterate in English.
—Jared Perlo, NBC news, 22 Dec. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for functionally illiterate
Adjective
-
Excluding industry from the room doesn’t make for ‘independent’ policy but sets the table for ignorant policy.—
Morgan Chalfant,
semafor.com,
10 Apr. 2026
-
Being ignorant but rational, the proto-citizens will necessarily settle on what Rawls called the Two Principles of Justice.—
George G. Szpiro,
Big Think,
9 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
At the age of 10, Elizabeth would see first hand what would happen when her mother, an uneducated woman with six children, would have to support herself on her own.—
Marcy Thompson,
Scientific American,
16 Apr. 2026
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Words with letters dropped off the end or entire phrases strung together to form new words were seen as improper speech of the uneducated and poor.—
Moriah Humiston,
NBC news,
3 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
His paternal grandparents were peasants in Transylvania; his maternal grandparents were also peasants, and his grandmother was illiterate.—
Rebecca Mead,
New Yorker,
13 Apr. 2026
-
Naïve little girls growing up illiterate in a conflict zone.—
Amanda Whiting,
Vulture,
8 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Such a practice would have been especially useful in nonliterate societies where knowledge was transmitted orally.—
Amanda Fortini,
New York Times,
12 Nov. 2020
Adjective
-
Repeal the benighted Jones Act, which raises energy and shipping costs.—
Editorial,
Boston Herald,
30 Mar. 2026
-
Repeal the benighted Jones Act, which raises energy and shipping costs.—
Bloomberg Opinion,
Twin Cities,
29 Mar. 2026
Adjective
-
De-Stalinization was quick and brutal, with history having the last say — a lesson guaranteed to go unlearned.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
15 Feb. 2026
-
Peeta explained unlearned stimuli cause AVs to simply stop.—
Doug Turnbull,
AJC.com,
25 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
No untutored voice, nor even sound of rushing car disturbed the seemingly sacred stillness of the hour.—
Erin Alberty,
Axios,
14 Apr. 2025
-
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
-
By comparison, Danceny is practically a boy, unschooled in the art of manipulation, and Reeves provides the character with the appropriate youthful naïveté.—
Tim Grierson,
Vulture,
18 Oct. 2025
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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
Cite this Entry
“Functionally illiterate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/functionally%20illiterate. Accessed 19 Apr. 2026.
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