Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Unlettered; illiterate; not learned.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Not having a letter.
  • adjective obsolete Illiterate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Without the presence or use of alphabetical letters.
  • adjective Illiterate.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

letter +‎ -less

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Examples

  • Had he been the kind of letterless country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have detected Will in a day; and the story of the "Concealed Poet" who really, at first, did the additions and changes in the Company's older manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences of Will of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month.

    Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown Andrew Lang 1878

  • Letters after a name do not modify character, they are there to confuse the letterless ones, just like a magicians wand is used, to get the hoi polloi [gnu] looking the other way while getting sheered.

    Lift The Stone Just A Little Bit Higher and………… « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2009

  • If you're the type who just can't let go, whose 'Berry is worn to letterless nibs, who hears the buzz of an insect and reaches for your holster, I bring help.

    Kimberly Bonnell: Urgent July Communique 2008

  • I passed by a ruined tomb in the I past by a broken tomb amid midst of a garden way, Upon a garth right sheen, Whereon whose letterless stone seven on seven blooms of Nu'aman blood-red anemones lay. glowed with cramoisie.

    The Life of Sir Richard Burton 2003

  • When the narrative is able to be resumed one finds that Wenamon has set sail from the city, and has travelled along the coast to the proud city of Tyre, where he arrived one afternoon penniless and letterless, having now nothing left but the little Amon-of-the-Road and his own audacity.

    The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

  • South, letterless barbarian pagans from the East and North.

    Europe and the Faith "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" Hilaire Belloc 1911

  • As was to be expected, after nearly three almost letterless years, I found rare delight in replying to my reawakened correspondents.

    A Mind That Found Itself An Autobiography Clifford Whittingham Beers 1909

  • As was to be expected, after nearly three almost letterless years, I found rare delight in replying to my reawakened correspondents.

    A Mind That Found Itself Beers, Clifford W. 1908

  • Payne Burton I passed by a ruined tomb in the I past by a broken tomb amid midst of a garden way, Upon a garth right sheen, Whereon whose letterless stone seven on seven blooms of Nu'aman blood-red anemones lay. glowed with cramoisie.

    The Life of Sir Richard Burton Wright, Thomas, 1859-1936 1906

  • The weeks went on, and every week of seven letterless mornings, every week of seven anxious nights, made the sisters more fully aware that notice and employment would not come to them in the way they had dreamed; made them think it well that

    Emily Brontë 1900

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