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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Illiteracy

Illiteracy \Il*lit"er*a*cy\, n.; pl. Illiteracies. [From Illiterate.]

  1. The state of being illiterate, or uneducated; lack of learning, or knowledge; ignorance; specifically, inability to read and write; as, the illiteracy shown by the last census.

  2. An instance of ignorance; a literary blunder.

    The many blunders and illiteracies of the first publishers of his [Shakespeare's] works.
    --Pope.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
illiteracy

1650s, from illiterate + -cy. Earlier in this sense was illiterature (1590s).

Wiktionary
illiteracy

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The inability to read. 2 (context uncountable English) The portion of a population unable to read, generally given as a percentage. 3 (context countable English) A word, phrase(,) or grammatical turn thought to be characteristic of an illiterate person.

WordNet
illiteracy
  1. n. ignorance resulting from not reading

  2. an inability to read [syn: analphabetism] [ant: literacy]

Usage examples of "illiteracy".

There are many jokes turning on malapropisms, illiteracy, dropped aitches and the rough manners of slum-dwellers.

He collared the nearest trash bag tearing it open, pulling out pages, scraps, fragments of landscapes, coastlines, a palm size scrip of cheap newsprint stapled together in black and blue here, here's one, Genesis to Revelation the whole thing boiled down to ten pitiful little pages of illiteracy and hideous cartoons, here's the creation.

This had to do with the lack of infrastructure, the prohibitive cost of services, an extortionist pricing structure, computer illiteracy and luddism (computer phobia).

It is also full of illiteracies and misprints ("A schematic illustration of the blast wave is shown in the neat page?

The rate of change of pronunciation is probably dependent, to some extent, on the state of a civilization, and changes should take place more rapidly in periods when illiteracy is high, and schools and spelling have less braking effect.