This week’s theme
Exempli gratia

This week’s words
fruiterer
innumerate

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(i-NOO/NYOO-muhr-it)

MEANING:

adjective: Marked by ignorance of mathematical concepts.
noun: A person who is unable to count or do simple mathematics.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin in- (not) + numerate (able to understand mathematical concepts), from numerare (to number), from numerus (number). Earliest documented use: 1959.

NOTES:

The word was coined by the UK’s Crowther Report as a direct parallel to illiterate. If we go by yesterday’s word that had a repeated suffix, how about adding a repeated prefix here? Ininnumerate, anyone? One or two, what’s the difference? For someone innumerate, a pie chart is just a list of desserts, and a tangent is just what they go off on when you try to explain sin and cos. Don’t confuse innumerate with enumerate. The latter is a verb that means to count or to list. Also see renumerate and arithmomania.

USAGE:

“Just this weekend, Trump claimed he had lowered prescription drug costs as much as 1500%. ‘I don’t mean 50%,’ Trump clarified. ‘I mean 14, 1500%.’ This is obviously false and innumerate. You can’t cut something more than 100%. It would mean drug companies were not only giving their drugs away for free, but actually paying people exorbitant sums to take them.”
Aaron Blake; Trump’s Cynical Bait-and-Switch on IVF; CNN; Aug 8, 2025.

See more usage examples of innumerate in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: