functionally illiterate

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for functionally illiterate
Adjective
  • Put simply, many Americans are woefully ignorant about the structure and features of their government.
    Josh Hammer, Newsweek, 14 Feb. 2025
  • Reading it, one is reminded, once again, that Trump is a politician who is cunning but semiliterate and ignorant.
    Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 13 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • In response, the governor suggested the president was uneducated about water policy, and declined to criticize him when asked about Democrats’ response to the brief pause in federal funding for state governments.
    Lia Russell, Sacramento Bee, 8 Feb. 2025
  • The majority of those who move here are uneducated and poor and nearly all become economic burdens on the U.S., either directly or indirectly.
    Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 31 Jan. 2025
Adjective
  • Since the vast majority of peasants were illiterate, this was an astounding number.
    Michael Bruening, The Conversation, 25 Feb. 2025
  • That’s especially true when an economically illiterate news media stokes consumer fears.
    Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2024
Adjective
  • And, of course, speedily deport those who misbehave. — George W. Price, Chicago Our benighted states The only renaming of place that is called for in this age of Donald Trump is the United States of America.
    Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, 3 Feb. 2025
  • And this is just a small sampling of the kind of far-right legal reasoning that routinely escapes this benighted court.
    Ian Millhiser, Vox, 25 Sep. 2024
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 does now.
    Uri Kaufman, Foreign Affairs, 20 Oct. 2023
Adjective
  • 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
  • To an untutored lurker, the whole thing seemed like … a frickin’ ballet, or some less dainty choreography, a headlong dance of astounding precision.
    Jody Rosen, New York Times, 2 Dec. 2023
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
Adjective
  • Still, with this inspirational true story, the streamer stands to reach a much wider public than Perry’s typical audience, reminding how much of American history remains untaught and largely untold.
    Peter Debruge, Variety, 6 Dec. 2024
  • Until recent years, the story of how this period affected California’s Indigenous peoples had largely gone untaught or underrecognized.
    Anne Wallentine, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 June 2024
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Functionally illiterate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/functionally%20illiterate. Accessed 1 Mar. 2025.

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