Definition of "analphabete"

In 1861, out of a total population of 21,777,331, there were no less than 16,999,701 "analphabetes," or persons absolutely unable to read.

1896, J[ohn] M[orrison] Reid, J. T. Gracey, “Part XI. Mission to Italy.”, in Missions and the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church […] In Three Volumes, volume III, New York, N.Y.: Hunt & Eaton; Cincinnati, Oh.: Cranston & Curts, section 7 (Annual Conferences, 1886–1887), page 327

The Beckettian progression appears occasionally: while Miss Counihan (static) is an omnivorous reader and Murphy (transitional) a strict non-reader, Cooper is an analphabete.

1968, Robert [Ligon] Harrison, Samuel Beckett’s Murphy: A Critical Excursion (University of Georgia Monographs; no. 15), Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, page 57

The porter was an analphabete, but together / we found your name, down among the Os, / and there you were, my brave love, / in a loose hospital gown that covered nothing; […]

1986, Michael Hofmann, “From A to B and Back Again”, in Frank Ormsby, Robert Johnstone, editors, The Honest Ulsterman, number 82, Belfast: Michael Stephens, page 16; reprinted in Mark Ford, editor, London: A History in Verse, Cambridge, Mass., London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012, page 704

All these love tales are in verse, transmitted up to this day, through countless generations of oral tradition by an analphabete people with an inborn, unerring sense of art.

1965, Commonweal, volume 82, page 325, column 1