unlettered person
- noun
:
persona analfabeta
- Employers sometimes offer special training programs for the unlettered person seeking work.
Examples
-
An unlettered person struggles to find work.
-
The charity focuses on teaching reading skills to every unlettered person in the community.
-
As an unlettered person, he found it difficult to fill out the required paperwork.
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Many unlettered persons live in rural areas.
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The unlettered person struggled to fill out the job application because they could not read or write.
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His background as an unlettered person made it difficult for him to understand complex instructions.
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Many unlettered people in rural areas lack access to basic education, limiting their opportunities.
Synonyms
3
3.0
A person who has little or no schooling
1
4.0
A person who cannot read or write
1
7.6
A person who can read and write only a little and cannot fill in basic forms
A person who cannot read or reads very little
Antonyms
How Literate
281
4.1
1
1.5
1
7.6
1
4.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a person who is illiterate or lacks formal education' is directly and predictably derived from combining 'unlettered' (not able to read or write) with 'person' (a human individual). This is a straightforward compositional construction found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will comprehend the MWE.
Etymology
Unlettered person comes from the older use of the word 'letter' meaning a written sign. A person with no letters could not read, so unlettered person now means 'someone who cannot read or has little formal education'.