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Instructed in learning, science, or literature; learned; lettered. The literate now chose their emperor, as the military chose theirs. Landor.

To employ or place so as to make alliteration. Skeat.

Ignorant of letters or books; unlettered; uninstructed; uneducated; as, an illiterate man, or people.

To wear out; to remove or destroy utterly by any means; to render imperceptible; as. to obliterate ideas; to obliterate the monuments of antiquity. The harsh and bitter feelings of this or that experience are slowly obliterated. W. Black.

To express or represent in the characters of another alphabet; as, to transliterate Sanskrit words by means of English letters. A. J. Ellis.

A illiterate person. [Obs.] Bailey.

A contraction for are not and am not; also used for is not. [Colloq. or llliterate speech]. See An't.

One who alliterates.

tion for are and am not; also used for is not; -- now usually written ain't. [Colloq. & illiterate speech.]

To reduce to nothing; to obliterate. Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct. And all her various objects of delight Annulled. Milton.

te, and that which results from the action. Many of these nouns have verbs in -ate; as, alliterate -ation, narrate -ation; many are derived through the French; as, alteration, visitation; and many are formed on verbs ending in the Greek formative -ize (Fr. -ise); as, civilization, demoralization.

To obliterate, as writing with ink; to cancel; to efface; -- generally with out; as, to blot out a word or a sentence. Often figuratively; as, to blot out offenses. One act like this blots out a thousand crimes. Dryden.

by interfering the concerns of others, speculation, etc. -- To burn out, to destroy or obliterate by burning. "Must you with hot irons burn out mine eyes" Shak. -- To be burned out, to suffer loss by fire, as the burning of one's house, store, or shop, with the contents. -- To burn up, To burn down, to burn entirely…

lines of a writing, or as a word or figure; to mark out by a cross line; to blot out or obliterate. A deed may be avoided by delivering it up to be cancelled; that is, to have lines drawn over it in the form of latticework or cancelli; the phrase is now used figuratively for any manner of obliterating or defacing it. B…

ng in the cavity of the corner tooth of a horse after the large spot or mark has become obliterated.

(Bot.) Blended into one; growing together, so as to obliterate all distinction.

ble to make known the meaning of; to make out or read, as words badly written or partly obliterated; to detect; to reveal; to unfold.

Adapted to destroy or obliterate. [R.] Evelyn.

Fig.: To obliterate; to expunge; to blot out; -- used of ideas in the mind or memory. Burke.

Rubbed or scraped out; effaced; obliterated.