as in benighted
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Recent Examples of unenlightened
Instead of transitioning these communities into new industries or providing them with the tools to adapt, our legislators have chosen to obscure coal and its workers, treating them as relics of a bygone, unenlightened and even primitive era.
—
Daniel A.c. McBride, Baltimore Sun, 1 June 2025
Dirty work is often assumed to be unenlightened work, but wildland firefighters have a unique empirical understanding of natural forces.
—M. R. O’Connor, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2025
And the culprit doesn’t seem to be a small number of unenlightened appraisers.
—Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 8 July 2024
Some are downright funky in their retro prejudices, others more quaintly unenlightened.
—Lauren Bravo, refinery29.com, 3 Jan. 2024
See All Example Sentences for unenlightened
Daniel A.c. McBride, Baltimore Sun, 1 June 2025
Dirty work is often assumed to be unenlightened work, but wildland firefighters have a unique empirical understanding of natural forces.
—M. R. O’Connor, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2025
And the culprit doesn’t seem to be a small number of unenlightened appraisers.
—Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 8 July 2024
Some are downright funky in their retro prejudices, others more quaintly unenlightened.
—Lauren Bravo, refinery29.com, 3 Jan. 2024
See All Example Sentences for unenlightened
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unenlightened
Adjective
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In particular, a conviction that the Internet and free trade would attract benighted countries toward liberal democratic capitalism became commonplace.—
BENN STEIL,
Foreign Affairs,
3 Oct. 2025
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One Battle After Another is the rare American film released in these benighted times of ours — with the backing of a major studio, no less — to be clear and insistent in the target of its anger, its despair and its prescriptions for what might make things better.—
Richard Lawson,
HollywoodReporter,
17 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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In Johnston’s reimagining, Jim and Credenza Twit operate the most disgusting, dangerous, and idiotic amusement park in the world, Twitlandia.—
Melanie Goodfellow,
Deadline,
6 Oct. 2025
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That’s just idiotic foreign policy.—
Jamie McIntyre,
The Washington Examiner,
5 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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The life of an unattractive and unintelligent young woman living in a dreary backwater in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.—
New York Times,
New York Times,
16 Oct. 2025
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The man seemed to think he was surrounded by incompetent, unintelligent, wastes of space.—
Josh Davis,
Fortune,
17 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Which is to say, this isn’t the story of a greedy, materialistic man who suffers a crisis of conscience while trying to pry a priceless treasure away from an uneducated hick who doesn’t know any better.—
David Ehrlich,
IndieWire,
29 Oct. 2025
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The people who looked Indigenous were the uneducated characters, the cartoon characters.—
Abbey White,
HollywoodReporter,
8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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In fact, the term itself was an epithet throughout the founding era, a way to describe ignorant and easily deceived popular majorities, perpetually vulnerable to demagogues.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
28 Oct. 2025
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International students are close to entirely ignorant of Canadian history and politics.—
Dónal Gill,
The Dial,
28 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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But also these dumb things, from another perspective, can have a certain type of digital trashy poetry.—
Andy Crump,
Time,
31 Oct. 2025
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The bounty hunter kills some random dudes who are dumb enough to cross him and steals a Falka doll from some little girls who have adopted the Rats as folk heroes.—
Scott Meslow,
Vulture,
30 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Unenlightened.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unenlightened. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
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