unlettered

From un- +‎ lettered.

unlettered (not comparable)

1. (figurative) Not instructed in letters; not educated; unable to read.

   Synonym: illiterate

   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 124, column 1:

     that vnletered ſmall knowing ſoule

   • 1909, Mark Twain , “Is Shakespeare Dead?”, in What Is Man? And Other Essays, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published May 1917, page 374:

     Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous.

   • 1915 December 4 – 1916 January 8, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter XVI, in The Son of Tarzan, Chicago, Ill.: A C McClurg & Co., published March 1917, →OCLC:

     They were short days, for into them were crowded many hours of insidious instruction of the unlettered child by the lonely woman.

   • 1919, Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop‎, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, →OCLC:

     But this Chapman girl will come to us wholly unlettered.

   • 1928 February, H P Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:

     an unlettered seaman

   • 2025 June 27, Lauren Groff, “Jane Austen’s Boldest Novel Is Also Her Least Understood”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Thus, the oldest Price girl, Fanny, is plucked from her pack of siblings and, at 10 years old, largely unlettered, hypersensitive and extremely timid, the girl is thrust into the life of Mansfield Park, a great estate in the country.

2. Not expressed in or marked with letters.

• unletteredness