illiteracy
/ɪˈlɪtəɹəsi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.86 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
5
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The portion of a population unable to read and write, generally given as a percentage.
Uncountable
noun
A word, phrase, or grammatical turn thought to be characteristic of an illiterate person.
Countable
Example Sentences
- "Illiteracy is widespread in certain areas of the country."
- "The heroines of these plays speak out against intraracial biases, stereotyping, lynchmobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, verbally abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. […] Without warning the doctor, she chokes the life out of her child in order to keep him safe from white lynchmobs."
- "While some local governments ignore the illiteracy problem, others are actively campaigning to teach people to read and write. In the villages of Xiping County in Henan Province in central China, students stop visitors and ask them to read a few characters on a blackboard. Any visitor who cannot read the characters is not allowed to enter the village. This means that illiterates are effectively grounded, and in frustration many have joined the special reading classes offered in each village. Now in Xiping County, according to local officials, only 1.7 percent of those between the ages of 20 and 40 are illiterate."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin in- Latin il- English il- English literacy English illiteracy From il- + literacy.