as in benighted
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Recent Examples of unenlightened
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
Most gratifying in Newnham’s investigation is how Hite reclaimed her own positive sense of self in exile through some key female friendships: a love goddess finding refuge with like-minded souls after a bruising battle with unenlightened, resentful mortals.
—Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 18 Nov. 2023
See All Example Sentences for unenlightened
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
Most gratifying in Newnham’s investigation is how Hite reclaimed her own positive sense of self in exile through some key female friendships: a love goddess finding refuge with like-minded souls after a bruising battle with unenlightened, resentful mortals.
—Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times, 18 Nov. 2023
See All Example Sentences for unenlightened
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unenlightened
Adjective
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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
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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
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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The people who looked Indigenous were the uneducated characters, the cartoon characters.—
Abbey White,
HollywoodReporter,
8 Oct. 2025
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This Court finds that Respondent’s lack of candor on his I-485 was not an oversight by an uninformed, uneducated applicant.—
Filip Timotija,
The Hill,
18 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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The pilot has moments both sweet and funny, and sets up the possibility of romance amongst the characters, as well as further high jinks from a rotating cast of license seekers and citizens ignorant of the requirements for a Real ID.—
Kelly Lawler,
USA Today,
11 Oct. 2025
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At the time, central Appalachia was widely depicted in the popular press as a backward, ignorant region whose mountainous terrain kept its people isolated, outside the flow of progress – a stereotype still common today.—
The Conversation,
The Conversation,
7 Oct. 2025
Adjective
-
And, in one of the dumbest and most obviously racist postr taken by a presidential candidate, at some point Republicans became fixated on the idea that Haitian migrants were stealing pets for food in the Midwest.—
Sal Rodriguez,
Oc Register,
18 Oct. 2025
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After Johnson gave his answer to that resolutely dumb question, several other luminaries took a whack at the zeitgeist piñata.—
Anthony Crupi,
Sportico.com,
17 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Unenlightened.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unenlightened. Accessed 21 Oct. 2025.
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