literacy means the ability to read and write. It carries an Arena rating of 1572, earned across 38 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, literacy ranks #887 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,284 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #5,261 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #10,315 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
literacy is pronounced /ˈlɪtəɹəsi/.
Why “literacy” is a great word
LITERACY — [Noun] The ability to read and write, or competence or knowledge in a specified area. Formed within English from the adjective literate (meaning 'able to read and write', itself from Latin litteratus 'lettered') and the abstract noun suffix -cy, attested from 1883. Unlike "illiteracy," which starkly denotes absence, or "fluency," which describes effortless flow, literacy is the hard-won threshold of comprehension and creation. It is the careful tracing of a finger beneath a first decoded sentence, the deliberate deciphering of a street sign in a foreign city, and the precise notation in a lab book—the minimal, monumental key that turns a world of marks into a world of meaning, an earned light that defines both a world and one's solitary place within it.
Etymology
From liter(ate) + -acy.
noun
- The ability to read and write.
- The ability to understand and evaluate something.e.g.“computer literacy”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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