UNEDUCATED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does uneducated mean? 

• UNEDUCATED (adjective)
  The adjective UNEDUCATED has 1 sense:

1. not having a good education

  Familiarity information: UNEDUCATED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNEDUCATED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not having a good education

Similar:

ignorant; illiterate (uneducated in the fundamentals of a given art or branch of learning; lacking knowledge of a specific field)

ignorant; nescient; unlearned; unlettered (uneducated in general; lacking knowledge or sophistication)

undereducated (poorly or insufficiently educated)

unschooled; untaught; untutored (lacking in schooling)

unstudied (lacking knowledge gained by study often in a particular field)

Also:

noncivilised; noncivilized (not having a high state of culture and social development)

innumerate (lacking knowledge and understanding of mathematical concepts and methods)

unenlightened (not enlightened; ignorant)

uninformed (not informed; lacking in knowledge or information)

illiterate (not able to read or write)

Antonym:

educated (possessing an education (especially having more than average knowledge))

 Context examples 

Groups of uneducated individuals who cannot read or write.

(Low Literacy Population, NCI Thesaurus)

He may be uneducated, but he certainly knows how to express the significance of the written word.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

She is uneducated and ignorant.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and wet, were little worn and fine.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)