illiterati

illiterati noun: those who cannot read and write Latin.

Noun (1)

illiterati pl (plural only)

(plural, plural-only) Those who cannot read and write Latin.
- Also known as illiterati (people ignorant of Latin letters), the common run of people were defined intellectually by the limits of their idiom and by the type and "quality" of reading materials available to them.2005, Jonathan Christian Petty, Wagner's Lexical Tonality, page 329
- Offering this address largely in the first person plural, Foxe identifies himself not with the illiterati, who were incapable of reading it, but with Latin-literate Protestants whose numbers must have included many who shared the compiler's ministerial vocation.2006, John N. King, Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' and Early Modern Print Culture, →ISBN, page 244
(plural, plural-only) Those who are illiterate or unlearned.
- A lower species, indeed, is that of the scribes you mention, who every night compose a journal for the satisfaction of such illiterati1788 July 4, letter Horace Walpole to Hannah More
- Aiming to dissipate the "Establishment view" that "Occultism consists of immature psychopathic illiterati with criminal and anti-social tendencies who emanate largely from lower socio-economic stratas of our society," ...1995, Michael York, The Emerging Network, →ISBN, page 133

Illiterati pl (plural only)

alternative form	Illiterati

From i- + literati.

What does illiterati mean?: Illiterati means those who cannot read and write Latin.
What part of speech is illiterati?: Illiterati is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: illiterati (page history and authors); Illiterati (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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