

Sep 26, 2017 This week’s theme

Words to describe people



This week’s words

drama queen

illiterati

dastard

samfie

mammothrept



Photo: Chris Goodwin Words to describe people A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg



illiterati PRONUNCIATION: (i-lit-uh-RAH-tee)

MEANING: noun: Illiterate or uninformed people.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin illitterati, plural of illiteratus (illiterate). Earliest documented use: 1788.

USAGE: “No one wanted to shoot booksellers, I assured myself -- except for illiterati and television executives during sweeps month.”

Joan Hess; A Really Cute Corpse; St Martins Press; 1988.



“Robert Dennis, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, said, ... ‘global climate change [is] still vehemently denied by the scientific illiterati.’”

Michael Specter; Test-Tube Burgers; The New Yorker; May 23, 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow. -T.S. Eliot, poet (26 Sep 1888-1965)





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