functionally illiterate

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for functionally illiterate
Adjective
  • Any suggestion that this is some kind of victory for Combs is ignorant.
    KiMi Robinson, USA Today, 27 Aug. 2025
  • In this case, the problem is ethics in the medical profession, as young doctor Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) moves from idealism to disillusionment and back again when faced with ignorant patients who are skeptical of his conclusions, economic hardship, and crooked colleagues.
    Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 25 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • These consequences will not be limited to the poor, the uneducated or minority groups.
    Arthur L. Kellermann, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Suddenly, your oldest is helping the youngest, or your toddler is excitedly explaining Santa to his woefully uneducated baby sister.
    Elizabeth Broadbent, Miami Herald, 1 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • 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
  • They were kept illiterate, by law.
    Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2025
  • This was particularly important given that much of their peasant audience was illiterate, Palmer explains.
    Danny Robb, JSTOR Daily, 8 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • With hundreds of years of patient work behind it, with some educational institutions willing to protect their scientists, and with researchers hard at work in less-benighted nations, the human desire to know and to understand will continue to produce results.
    Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Like the original Outlander, Blood of My Blood is believably frank about the possibility of assault in the benighted past.
    Graham Hillard, The Washington Examiner, 22 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • 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
  • 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 do now.
    Uri Kaufman, Foreign Affairs, 20 Oct. 2023
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
  • 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
  • Some research also suggests that children who are unschooled underperform on academic assessments, particularly regarding reading.
    Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 24 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 5 Sep. 2025.

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