I'm looking for a word which might describe someone who can read and write (ie, is literate) but at the same time cannot comprehend or at least seems not to be able to comprehend what has been written/read.
Literate has its opposite in illiterate in both noun and adjective forms.
Despite my philological background I can't think of a comparable word based on comprehend.
Sensory aphasia or dysphasia implies a pathological condition; I looking for something which indicates just rank stupidity vis-à-vis comprehension.
So I'm taking the easy way out (for the moment).

And I still haven't figured out what that rust-colored ditch plant is.

I've run across many people like that, and I don't think there's an "umbrella" term for them.

Literacy, of course, in no way equates to intelligence, so rank stupidity is frequently the culprit, but I've often found self-indulgence to be the guilty party.

How about "cognitively challenged?"

Indeed. Also, dufus comes to mind.
But I'm looking for something a tad more elegant, preferably with a Greek or Latin derivation.

How about williambuckleyesque?

In cognitive science, the term "aphasia" is used to indicate people who have a brain injury that prevents speech, and "alexia" to people who have a brain injury that interferes with writing and/or reading.

Not all aphasias and alexias prevent speech or writing altogether. Some, such as Wernicke's aphasia and/or alexis, affect comprehension without production; a person can still speak, write, and read, but can not understand anything and produces only gibberish.

RE How about williambuckleyesque?

Unfortuntely that would imply the individual was uncommonly erudite and have a fabulous lexicon.
The sorts I'm thinking of not so much (by a long shot).

RE Not all aphasias and alexias prevent speech or writing altogether. Some, such as Wernicke's aphasia and/or alexis, affect comprehension without production; a person can still speak, write, and read, but can not understand anything and produces only gibberish.

Indeed. That's why I restricted my comment to sensory aphasia/dysphasia. The point being that I'm not looking for terminology which implies a pathological condition (which might 'exonerate' the individual's shortcoming). Also no 'mental illness'.

Obsessive Cursoriness?

Your description seems to suggest that the sufferers from this condition have some means of alleviating or even overcoming it with some effort on their behalf, but that they are not willing to make that effort.

After 25+ years as a technical instructor in industry the term I would use is, "recent engineering graduate".

Given the English language is undergoing constant change, with somewhat curious words being recognized officially, it's fair for you to make create a new one......perhaps cognizant with an appropriate prefix.

ryck

I was headed down that road, when mirabile dictu, I discovered that I had completely missed a secondary definition of 'comprehensive'. Ergo, for better or worse, the term is 'incomprehensive'.
Ta-da!

I don't get it.......

Fæx tauri.

[If the translation isn't immediately obvious, think about it. Tick, tock.]

In gardening terms.....Bull Compost????

Yes indeed. [I just love the singular of the word which is generally used in the plural. Usually nobody catches on — probably because classical education has long since fallen by the wayside.]

Although not related to your original post, perhaps you're the person to of whom I should ask a philological question that has puzzled me for a while. In the past 30 years or so it seems that people have stopped making decisions. They now take them.

Although I continue to make decisions, I have wondered why people have taken to taking them.

ryck

Do you suppose it is because making a decision implies accepting the responsibility for it while taking a decision ducks the responsibility by implying a decision made or suggested by someone else.

Personally I have never taken any decision and I have the battle scars to prove it.

Huh. I've never heard of anyone referring to "taking" a decision. To me, that would seem to imply choosing an option or options provided by someone else, without actually having a choice about what those options were.

Ryck is quite right. As it's being used now almost exclusively, even in educated circles and also primarily among polliticians (only a small overlap there), I'm annoyed by it.

As far as I'm concerned, the only proper usage is to "make a decision".

If you're not paying close attention, the difference between "making" and "taking" is easily overlooked (or should that be "overheard", in a non-standard sense). Once you hear it and process it, you won't miss it.

Mayhap someone should ask the question of Ben Zimmer, who took over the On Language column in the New York Times Magazine after the death of William Safire.
According to the editor: "Ben Zimmer will answer one reader question every other week. Send your queries to onlanguage@nytimes.com."

Surely you'll accept "come to a decision" in cases in which weighty issues must be pondered?


Wonder how many reader questions he'll answer in the in-between weeks?

Thanks for the lead. I checked and it turns out the question was covered in the column by William Safire April 16, 1989 sub-titled "TO ARMS, TO ARMS, The Britishisms are coming!"

He was responding to an Emily Wolfe, who had written: ''Commentators, politicians and, most recently, a Harvard economist on ABC News, are now referring to decisions being taken rather than made. Have you noticed people are taking more decisions? It sounds extremely affected to me.''

Safire responded, in part:

The British like the verb take. We say, ''I get your point''; they say, ''I take your point,'' as if accepting a serve in tennis. In what must be a related development, Hollywood moguls for more than a decade have been taking a meeting, probably rooted in the Britishism taking lunch, an offshoot of taking tea. A good topic for a doctoral thesis would be the connection that may exist between taking a decision and doing lunch.

Although take a decision is not yet in the dictionaries, the 56th sense of the verb take in the Oxford English Dictionary is ''to lay hold of, raise, put forth, make (an objection, an exception, a distinction, etc.).'' That definition suggests a connection of the rhyming take and make.

The term decision maker, in frequent use by lobbyists in Washington, has not yet been replaced by decision taker, but give the unspoken locution time.

Thinking about it, doesn't "incomprehensive" suggest an inability to comprehend whereas "non-comprehensive" covers that as well as ignored ability?

I had thought that Safire might have covered it at some point, but my personal files of On Language columns only go back 10 years.
The fact that you found it in a column more than a decade earlier certainly corroborates (y)our thoughts on the matter.

RE Thinking about it, doesn't "incomprehensive" suggest an inability to comprehend whereas "non-comprehensive" covers that as well as ignored ability?

I'm not certain that there's a meaningful distinction there; both would mean "not comprehensive".
I can find no reference to either which means other than not the primary definition.
So it's apparently a Hobson's choice.
I'll have to think about it some more.

How about: aliterate - a person who can read but is disinclined to derive information from literary sources.
Also, from various definitions of fool/stupid, etc., I only found two that also have a meaning of incompetent; these are doofus (mentioned before) and dork (although the second meaning of the word is quite different).
English is a very efficient language, but I guess, what you want cannot be described in full in one word. Unless you want to create your own... (literoofus)

The prefix a- in its meaning "without" (eg, aphasia, ataxia) is fairly restrictive.
That's why in- (with its various Latinate assimilations) is used for "not".
I quite like "preliterate" in a facetious sense for adults who have ostensibly learned to read but suck at it.
Literacy does not constitute ability to comprehend; just look at those who botch theirs SATs.
As I recall, back in olden days, English classes had regular sessions devoted to "reading for comprehension". I always thought that that was "funny strange", for what would be the point otherwise? But now I come across myriads (yes, myriads) of people who are literate and incomprehensive (and, for that matter, cashiers who are innumerate — but that's a whole other story).