illiterate

The son of a poor, illiterate peasant family, Lula worked as a peanut seller and shoe-shine boy as a child, only learning to read when he was 10 years old.

From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2026

He has commonly been described as illiterate, but O'Keeffe uncovered a draft of the memoir among Napier's papers that was written in Byfield's own hand.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 7, 2026

Parton's extraordinarily successful book project was born of personal anguish: her own father grew up illiterate in rural Tennessee.

From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026

He speaks Old English and is illiterate, though his culture is rich in poetry and heroic tales.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.

From "Kindred" by Octavia Butler

The unintended consequences of do-goodism by cultural illiterates.

From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2018

But these illiberal cultural illiterates instead wanted curtains for the offending Elizabethan play.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 19, 2017

Thus, contract laborers were excluded in 1885, immoral persons and anarchists in 1903, and illiterates in 1917.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2016

Female illiteracy levels in India are high; indeed it is estimated that there are more female illiterates in India than in the rest of the world combined.

From Forbes ● Feb. 23, 2015

The number of illiterates by the census of 1870 above the age of ten years, in round numbers, was 5,500,000.

From The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 by Various