Innumeracy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Lack of numeracy; low numeracy. countable, uncountable

    "John Allen Paulos and others have asked our society to consider numeracy and innumeracy in a way closer to how we view literacy and illiteracy."

Example

More examples

"John Allen Paulos and others have asked our society to consider numeracy and innumeracy in a way closer to how we view literacy and illiteracy."

Etymology

From in- + numeracy; coined by Douglas Hofstadter and popularized by mathematician John Allen Paulos in his 1989 book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.