Not having received formal schooling or training, or lacking knowledge about something specific.
From 'un-' (not) + 'educated' (past participle of 'educate' from Latin 'educare' meaning to lead out/develop). The prefix negates the concept. Modern use became common as public education expanded.
Calling someone 'uneducated' based on formal schooling is misleading—some of the greatest inventors and innovators, like Thomas Edison, had very little formal education but were brilliantly self-taught!
Historically applied disproportionately to women regardless of literacy, used to justify exclusion from professions, voting, and property rights. Encoded assumption that women were intellectually incapable.
Specify the domain: 'lacks training in [field]' or 'did not attend [level]' rather than the broad dismissal 'uneducated,' which carries gendered devaluation.
["untrained in","without formal education in","self-taught"]
Women scholars have documented how access to education was systematically denied and how self-taught women achieved intellectual prominence (Hypatia, Émilie du Châtelet, Rosalind Franklin).
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