uneducated

UK/ʌnˈɛdjʊkeɪtɪd/US/ʌnˈɛd͡ʒəkeɪtɪd/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,831 of 15,258neutral

Uneducated means having had little or no schooling. A fact about opportunity, not about intelligence.

That distinction matters, because the word is often used as if it meant stupid, which is a different thing entirely, and a great many uneducated people have been extremely clever. Careful writing uses it about access to schooling rather than about a person's worth. There is a lighter use in an uneducated guess, meaning one made without knowledge, which plays against the phrase an educated guess.

Definitions of uneducated

1adjectiveuneducatedHaving had little or no formal schooling.B2+
“Both his parents were entirely uneducated.”

Where it comes from

From un- + educated.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 14 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

uneducated in the wild

In the study of language and literary style, a vulgarism is an expression or usage considered non-standard or characteristic of uneducated speech or writing.
Vulgarism
Aurelius was born to a poor family in North Africa to an uneducated father.
Aurelius Victor
In Nider's Formicarius, the witch is described as uneducated and more commonly female.
Formicarius
Anna Comnena and other writers describe him as uneducated and of weak character.
Eustratius Garidas
The uneducated genius) is a 1960 Indian Tamil-language drama film directed and co-written by A.
Padikkadha Medhai

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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