literate

From Middle English litterate, from Latin litterātus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪtəɹət/

• Audio (Southern England)

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literate (comparative more literate, superlative most literate)

1. Able to read and write; having literacy.

   Antonym: illiterate

   • 1997, George Carlin, Brain Droppings‎, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 86:

     Intelligence tests are biased toward the literate.

2. Knowledgeable in literature, writing; literary; well-read.
   • 2008 January 7, Charles Hugh Smith, Can a Fragmented Culture Find Common Ground?‎:

     The reason literature plays a unique role in any literate culture is its longevity.

3. Which is used in writing (of a language or dialect).
   • 2005, Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Harper:

     The Mongol emperor Kublai Khan even commissioned an alphabetic script for his empire, to be used officially for all its literate languages, Mongolian, Chinese, Turkic and Persian.

• illiterate
• letter
• literal
• literacy
• literary
• literature

literate (plural literates)

1. A person who is able to read and write.
2. (historical) A person who was educated but had not taken a university degree; especially a candidate to take holy orders.

• “literate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “literate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• laterite, teretial

literāte

1. vocative masculine singular of literātus

• literate in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)