Unlettered

a. [UN-¹ 9. Cf. MDu. ongelettert, Du. ongeletterd.]

  1.  Not instructed in letters; not possessed of book-learning.

c. 1340.  Hampole, Prose Tr., 32. Anoþer mane … unletterede may noght so redyly hafe at his hand Haly Writt.

1387.  Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), VII. 181. A man forsoþe … þat was unlettred, but ful myghty in money.

c. 1440.  Alph. Tales, 468. When þe abbott Pambo was vnletterd, he went vnto a man þat was letterd [etc.].

1544.  Leland, N. Y. Gift, in Itin. (1768), I. p. xix. The Italians … counte … al other nations to be barbarus and onletterid saving their owne.

1593.  [see UNLECTURED ppl. a.].

1624.  Gataker, Transubst., 156. As children or unlettered persons, when they looke on bookes, know not the power of the letter.

1642.  Milton, Apol. Smect., 36. Such a lost construction, as no man either letter’d or unletter’d will be able to piece up.

1747.  Wesley, Prim. Physick (1762), p. xxiv. Easy to be applied by plain unlettered Men.

1781.  Cowper, Conversat., 12. As alphabets in ivory employ … the yet unletter’d boy.

1817.  Chalmers, Disc. Chr. Revel., ii. 86. The mind of an ordinary and unlettered peasant.

1867.  Augusta Wilson, Vashti, xxv. Sturdy but unlettered mechanics.

  absol.  1751.  Johnson, Rambler, No. 180, ¶ 2. The unlettered and unenlightened.

1812.  G. Chalmers, Dom. Econ. Gt. Brit., Pref. 14. That the learned are sometimes too confident, and the unlettered always too credulous.

1861.  Stanley, East. Ch., viii. (1869), 273. Sacred pictures … are the Bibles of the unlettered.

  b.  Pertaining to, characterized by, ignorance of letters.

1588.  Shaks., L. L. L., IV. ii. 18. After his … vnpolished, vneducated,… or rather, vnlettered … fashion.

1697.  Collier, Ess. Mor. Subj., II. (1703), 99. Books … give a more universal insight into things, than can be learned from unlettered observation.

1763.  J. Brown, Poetry & Music, iv. 36. Savages … in their present unlettered State of Ignorance and Simplicity.

1807.  G. Chalmers, Caledonia, I. III. vii. 423. An upright stone still forms the unlettered memorial of his odious end.

1820.  Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 186. They were learned men in an unlettered age.

a. 1864.  Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks. (1879), I. 142. His conversation has much strong, unlettered sense.

  2.  Not expressed in, or marked with, letters.

1633.  P. Fletcher, Poet. Misc., Asclepiads, 1. Unletter’d Word, which never care could heare.

1782.  [T. Maude], Verbeia, 37, note. This unlettered tomb is in a mutilated state, with his wife by his side, without any insignia to denote the parties, but the armorial ones of the family, save a modern scratching by some casual hand, upon the cheek of the Judge.

  Hence † Unletteredly adv., Unletteredness.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 366/1. On-letterydly, illiterate.

1653.  E. Waterhouse, Apol. Learn., 120. Ignorance and unletterednesse ill becomes any man who bears the Image of God.

1890.  Bp. Hobhouse, Churchw. Acc. (Somerset), p. xxiii. The entire unletteredness of the community.