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
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Across Southern California, e-bike popularity has soared, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic — with a disportionate number of young riders ignorant or ignoring the rules of the road, authorities say, leading to crashes and in some cases fatalities.—
Nathaniel Percy,
Oc Register,
20 Mar. 2026
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Having access to knowledge and being able to collectively reflect are rights too precious to surrender to those who prefer us ignorant.—
Megan Thiele Strong,
Chicago Tribune,
16 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Obama just went about his job and didn’t send untrained, uneducated wannabe stormtroopers into cities to intimidate people with tremendous shows of force.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
3 Feb. 2026
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Additionally, data released by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in September revealed that nearly half of the country’s youth population, aged 18 to 30, is unemployed, uneducated, or lacking training.—
Nimi Princewill,
CNN Money,
14 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Dientes was a peasant, substantially illiterate and uneducated.—
Chandler Fritz,
The New York Review of Books,
21 Mar. 2026
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Over the past few years, the tech world has become increasingly hostile to traditional media outlets, dismissing them as technologically illiterate or openly antagonistic toward the industry.—
Diego Lasarte,
New Yorker,
25 Feb. 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
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If or when the elephants die, our own benighted species will surely not be far behind.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
27 Feb. 2026
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Even with Dibble effortlessly laying waste to every point and argument made by his benighted co-guest, Joe Rogan remained unconvinced.—
Rafael Perez,
Oc Register,
1 Dec. 2025
Adjective
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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
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Peeta explained unlearned stimuli cause AVs to simply stop.—
Doug Turnbull,
AJC.com,
25 Jan. 2026
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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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 30 Mar. 2026.
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