literacy
- 1The ability to read written language and to write it.
The country invested heavily in literacy after years of low school attendance.
Adult literacy classes help people who never learned to read as children.
Oppositeilliteracy
- 2The ability to understand a particular subject and to evaluate it.
Strong scientific literacy lets readers judge health claims for themselves.
Schools are adding financial literacy to help teenagers manage their money.
Similarknowledge, understanding, competence, proficiency, fluency
Oppositeilliteracy, ignorance
Note
An extension of the reading-and-writing sense that now lives mostly as the second half of a compound: computer literacy, media literacy, and newer coinages such as Prof Alan McKee's call for "porn literacy," which he glosses as learning to "read porn well." The metaphor of reading a field is the point. Because each field can have its own, the plural literacies comes naturally here.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with literacy, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Formed from "literate" combined with the suffix "-cy".