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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Their earliest performances could be fun and irreverent, too, but Boy George says they were also marred by ignorant, homophobic heckling.
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And using both words does not reveal that a person is ignorant but rather cosmopolitan.
Adjective
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The report says there's been progress, but minorities, along with people who are poor and uneducated, still face higher death rates.
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The hillbilly is portrayed as ignorant, uneducated, and unsophisticated; they are often depicted as being unkempt in appearance, perhaps noticeably dirty or walking around barefoot.
Adjective
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While about 90% of the Black population in Southern states were illiterate in 1865, this percentage dropped to 70% by 1880.
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The residents of the adjacent villages were largely illiterate rice farmers, who worked their fields by day and illegally cut down trees by night.
Adjective
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Such a practice would have been especially useful in nonliterate societies where knowledge was transmitted orally.
Adjective
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But this time there would be no panel from the National Endowment of the Arts sifting through the applications, no oversight from cultural officials and benighted curators—the usual process.
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He’s introduced it to diners in formerly benighted, hash-less regions, including Texas.
Adjective
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De-Stalinization was quick and brutal, with history having the last say — a lesson guaranteed to go unlearned.
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Peeta explained unlearned stimuli cause AVs to simply stop.
Adjective
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No untutored voice, nor even sound of rushing car disturbed the seemingly sacred stillness of the hour.
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His savage, untutored mind suggested no better way than that of wreaking vengeance upon those who had wronged him.
Adjective
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When Obama met Trump for a ritual pre-Inauguration visit to the Oval Office, he was struck by how unschooled and incurious the President-elect was.
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Mata was also concerned about how the data failed to display how INA staff works with the lowest English proficiency students in the district — specifically those who are unschooled, and oftentimes refugees who have just entered the country.
Cite this Entry
“Functionally illiterate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/functionally%20illiterate. Accessed 29 Jun. 2026.
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