‘A hundred literate children’

Q: In a NY Times obituary, a historian refers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as “arrogant, literate, obdurate, revengeful,” etc. Is it not odd to describe an Islamic scholar as “literate,” i.e., merely able to read and write? A: The word “literate” meant educated or learned when it first appeared in English in the 14th century. […] The post ‘A hundred literate children’ first appeared on Grammarphobia.