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Illiteracy   Listen
noun
Illiteracy  n.  (pl. illiteracies)  
1.
The state of being illiterate, or uneducated; lack of learning, or knowledge; ignorance; specifically, inability to read and write; as, the illiteracy shown by the last census.
2.
An instance of ignorance; a literary blunder. "The many blunders and illiteracies of the first publishers of his (Shakespeare's) works."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Illiteracy" Quotes from Famous Books



... journey far before discovering a more enthusiastic people than the teachers and the scholars of the Southern uplands. The appalling extent of illiteracy among the descendants of Marion's men finds a parallel in their pathetic desire ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... good will come for all the world, especially for Europe. We Germans are the most industrious, the most earnest and the best-educated race on this side of the ocean. To-day one-fourth of the population of Belgium cannot read and write. Under German influence illiteracy will disappear from among them. Russia stands for reaction; England for selfishness and perfidy; France for decadence. Germany stands for progress. Do not believe the claims of our foes that our Kaiser wishes to be another Napoleon and hold Europe under ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... has already sounded the alarm in the appalling figures which mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has risen among our voters and ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... exempt. Real learning was confined, after all, to the ministers and the richer classes in the New England colonies, pretty much as in the mother-country. In Plymouth and Rhode Island, where the hard conditions of life rendered any legal system of education impracticable, illiteracy was frequent. The class of ignorant people most often met with in New England were fishermen and the small farmers of the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... agenda. Erratic rainfall and the delayed demobilization of agriculturalists from the military kept cereal production well below normal, holding down growth in 2002. Eritrea's economic future depends upon its ability to master social problems such as illiteracy, unemployment, and low skills, and to open its economy to private enterprise so the diaspora's money and ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... south and central Europe. And it is this "new immigration," so called, that has created the "immigration problem." It is largely responsible for the agitation for restrictive legislation on the part of persons fearful of the admixture of races, of the difficulties of assimilation, of the high illiteracy of the southern group; and most of all for the opposition on the part of organized labor to the competition of the unskilled army of men who settle in the cities, who go to the mines, and who struggle for the existing jobs in competition with ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... While state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited amount of knowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said to have a beneficial influence ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... that puts the flag there, but the serious recognition of the bed-rock principle of our Union: That we are all of one blood, one bounden duty; that all these anti-social prejudices are just as shameful as illiteracy, and that they must disappear as soon as ever we shall come to know each other well. Knowledge is power. That is true. And it is also true: A house divided against itself ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... be forded. She meant to ride only about four of them before abandoning her mule for the detour on foot. But when she had left the town only a little way two horsemen came up behind her. She knew neither of them, and they were immature boys, with the empty and vacuous faces of almost degenerate illiteracy. They seemed unarmed but since it was vital to Alexander's scheme to ride unwatched it became important to have them either go ahead or to distance them. Accordingly she urged her mule into a lumbering canter and when a turn of the road had been reached ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... sentences of death for rape, and asserted that, at least in capital cases, where the defendant is unable to employ counsel and is incapable adequately of making his own defense because of ignorance, illiteracy, or the like, it is the duty of the court, whether requested or not, to assign counsel for him as a necessary requisite of due process of Law. The duty is not discharged by an assignment at such time or under such circumstances as to preclude the giving of effective aid in preparation ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... noblemen absorbing the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune succeeding tot he property of the baron. An average Russian peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of his illiteracy than an average farmer of the New World. He has the culture of the ages in his traditions, religion and national folk-arts. Russia has more than a thousand municipal theaters, more than a hundred grand operas, more than a hundred colleges and universities ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... are the most competent people on this globe of ours, which is round like an orange and slightly flattened at the poles. There is less illiteracy, less pauperism, less drunkenness, more general intelligence, more freedom in Switzerland than in any other country on earth. This has been so for two hundred years: and the reason, some say, is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... failure. Story of Iowa election. Woman's Christian Temperance Union proves forty-seven varieties of corruption. South Dakota. Foreign vote defeated Woman Suffrage there. Figures of some counties. Relation between Prohibition and Woman Suffrage votes. West Virginia. Illiteracy and conservatism defeated Woman Suffrage there. Liquor influence felt. Corruption in Berkely County, West Virginia. Special Legislative session called but investigation of frauds abandoned. Analysis of vote ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... was founded by Jesse Atwood, of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, in 1778, and has become known, since then, as a place where skilful farmers and brave sailors could always be found. It also kept Maine supplied for years with oldest inhabitants. It is said that the name was an accident of illiteracy, and that it is the only place in the world that owes its title to bad spelling. The settlers who followed Atwood there were numerous enough to form a township after ten years, and the name they decided on for their commonwealth was Orangetown, so called for a village in Maryland where some ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... Activity: Every genuinely democratic power must, in the domain of education, in a country where illiteracy and ignorance reign supreme, make its first aim the struggle against this darkness. It must acquire in the shortest time universal literacy, by organising a network of schools answering to the demands ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... so artificial a set of rules of evidence as England and the United States. This is because in no other country is the right to a jury trial so extensive. Many of these rules date back to the early history of the English common law. It was a time of general illiteracy. The ordinary juror could not read or write. His powers of reasoning and discrimination had had little or no cultivation. It was thought dangerous to allow him to listen to any evidence that was not of the clearest and best kind. It was thought necessary ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... is that in life that lies too deep for any mere change of environment to touch. Sammy remembered a lesson the shepherd had given her: gentle spirit may express itself in the rude words of illiteracy; it is not therefore rude. Ruffianism may speak the language of learning or religion; it is ruffianism still. Strength may wear the garb of weakness, and still be strong; and a weakling may carry the weapons of strength, but fight with a faint heart. So, beneath all the changes ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... their priests a considerable part of the Irish electorate falsely declared themselves to be illiterate, so that the secrecy of the ballot might be avoided and their votes might be regulated by the clergy. On a comparison of the statistics of illiterate voters and the Census of illiteracy a similar proportion was found to exist as that between the total number of voters and the whole population, in this ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... valuable in determining whether erasures have been made on paper. Also it will discover which of two crossed lines was last written. It may determine whether the ragged edges of the ink lines are those of fraud, illiteracy, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... long existed an astonishingly large amount of illiteracy among them. Through an examination made for the U.S. Department of Education, it has been found that among women signing deeds or other legal documents in Massachusetts, from 1653 to 1656, as high as fifty per cent could not write ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... used to these interruptions and eruptions of illiteracy on our part. I think she rather enjoys them, as in the presence of such complete ignorance as ours her lamp of ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Abraham Lincoln went with his pioneer father to settle in wild Indiana, the chief diversion of the rude inhabitants was from the preaching of the traveling pastors. They were singular devotees whose sincerity redeemed all their flaws of ignorance, illiteracy, and violence. Abraham, with his inherent proneness toward imitation of oratory, used to "take them off" to the hilarity of the laboring men who formed his first audiences. Out of his recollections came this tale, which he liked to act out with all ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... for the charges of musical ignorance, illiteracy, musical-"ghost"-employment, and other imposture, under which he suffered in this country nearly all his life. Jullien indignantly denied the hard impeachment, and declared that he began his musical life as a fifer in the French navy, and had in that ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... serious of the educational shortcomings thus revealed is a high percentage of illiteracy—nearly eight per cent, I understand, the country over. The seriousness of such a situation can scarcely be overestimated. It was serious in time of war—the inability of a soldier to read orders, or to follow written directions, or to make written ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... the committee also suggests the heroic element in our work. It brings to mind the obstacles and difficulties which we are called upon to overcome. The illiteracy of the colored people is a fact immense in extent and dark in its prophetic significance. Your hearts were rejoiced, I know, by the statements of the changes going on in the education of the colored children in several States through free schools. The need of this movement will be appreciated ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various

... that the fundamental problem in this question of immigration is most frequently overlooked. Back of the statistics of illiteracy, pauperism, criminality, and the economic value of immigrants lies another one of great proportions. What has been the effect upon our native stock? What has been the expense, to our native stock, of this increase of population and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... a little knowledge of such subjects as geography, law, and philosophy. Besides these monastic and cathedral schools, others were maintained by the guilds. Boys who had no regular schooling often received instruction from the parish priest of the village or town. Illiteracy was common enough in medieval times, but the mass of the people were by no ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... poverty—the inability of the individual to make the proper use of his income. Unless our citizens are trained to spend money wisely, and to distinguish clearly between the relative values of services and commodities, an increase in wages will never eliminate malnutrition, illiteracy, and ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... man, afford also interesting memorials of his times. If that age be compared and contrasted with the present, the difference cannot fail to make us exult in living, breathing, and acting in a region of intellect and freedom, which is all sunshine and happiness, opposed to the gloom and illiteracy which darkened the days of Aubrey. Even Harvey, Wren, Flamsteed, and Newton, his contemporaries and friends, were slaves and victims to the superstition and ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... because he was on his vacation, perhaps because of something in his heart awakened by the fact that he was going to his boyhood home, the man felt, as he had never felt before, his kinship with them all. With wealth and poverty, with culture and illiteracy, with pleasure and crime, with sadness and joy, as evidenced in the lives of those who passed in the crowd, the man felt a sympathy and understanding that was strangely new. And, more than this, he saw that each was kin to the other. He saw that, in spite of the wide gulf that ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... about the ignorance and illiteracy of the Boers may be admitted to apply to the great majority of the grown-up and of the more maturely aged population; those of youthful age have of late years had the benefit of a better education than ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... The cessation of Ethiopian trade, which mainly used Eritrean ports before the war, leaves Eritrea with a large economic hole to fill. Eritrea's economic future depends upon its ability to master fundamental social problems like illiteracy, unemployment, and low skills, and to convert the diaspora's money and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... so characteristic of those centuries, much of interest in the history of literature; to show that every age produced learned and inquisitive men by whom books were highly prized and industriously collected for their own sakes; in short, to rescue the period from the stigma of absolute illiteracy. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... a race from original heathenism which has come through two hundred years of the darkness of slavery, set free in exceedingly unhelpful conditions, and shut in for the most part to association with illiteracy, bad manners, bad morals and bad habits. Only exceptionally can colored people come near enough to those who are high and good to get much good by seeing what goodness is and how ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various



Words linked to "Illiteracy" :   ignorance, analphabetism, literacy, inability



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