ignorant
/ˈɪɡn(ə)r(ə)nt
/adjective
1Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated: he was told constantly that he was ignorant and stupid...
- The policy culture sees the community culture as uneducated, ignorant, backward and occasionally comic in its primitive beliefs.
- In that way, our people can remain ignorant, uneducated and dumb.
- The people are too blind or too uninformed or too uneducated or too ignorant or too whatever to see the threat that faces them because they refuse to take a look at it.
Synonyms
uneducated, unknowledgeable, untaught, unschooled, untutored, untrained, illiterate, unlettered, unlearned, unread, uninformed, unenlightened, unscholarly, unqualified, benighted, backward;
inexperienced, unworldly, unsophisticated;
unintelligent, stupid, simple, empty-headed, mindless
informal pig-ignorant, thick, airheaded, (as) thick as two short planks, dense, dumb, dim, dopey, wet behind the ears, slow on the uptake, dead from the neck up, a brick short of a load, two sandwiches short of a picnic
British informal dozy, divvy, daft, not the full shilling
Scottish & Northern English informal glaikit
North American informal chowderheaded, dumb-ass
West Indian informal dotish
South African informal dof
rare hebete
1.1 [predicative] Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular: I was largely ignorant of the effects of radiotherapy...
- We need to reach out to our infosec brethren because no security executive can afford to be ignorant of information risk management.
- This article provided a great deal of information to those ignorant of what Bob Jones stands for, but not enough.
- Even the well informed are ignorant of the extent to which they are subsidised.
Synonyms
without knowledge, unaware, unconscious, insensible;
unfamiliar with, unacquainted with, unconversant with, inexperienced in, uninitiated in, blind to, oblivious to, naive about, innocent about, green about, a stranger to;
uninformed about, unenlightened about, unschooled in
informal in the dark about, clueless about, not knowing the first thing about, not having the faintest about
literary nescient, strange to
2 informal Discourteous or rude: this ignorant, pin-brained receptionist...
- Not some rude, ignorant, person who appears to have no respect for either his office or the people of Tasmania, and flouts our laws as if he is someone who is immune to them.
- I'm rude, ignorant, extremely lazy, and like to be told what to think.
- I did complain to my GP once that they were rude and ignorant and he said… ahh they have a very hard job dealing with the druggies and lower classes round here.
Synonyms
rude, impolite, ill-mannered, bad-mannered, unmannerly, ungracious, discourteous, insensitive, uncivil, ill-humoured, surly, sullen;
boorish, oafish, loutish, crude, coarse, vulgar, gross
3West Indian Easily angered: I is an ignorant man—even police don’t meddle with me...
- I is an ignorant crack-a-lacking moron.
Derivatives
ignorantly
/ adverb ...- When he's not yammering ignorantly about the Catholic Faith and struggling to find new ways to square the circle, he's often quite good.
- But we are ignorantly destroying our own heritage… throwing mud on our own heads!
- But once they agreed to partake in this vicious experiment, all of them descended to the level of the worst kind of famewhores: people who will ignorantly sacrifice their dignity to be on television.
Origin
Late Middle English: via Old French from Latin ignorant- 'not knowing', from the verb ignorare (see ignore).