legitimate
Americanadjective
-
according to law; lawful.
the property's legitimate owner.
- Antonyms:
- illegitimate
-
in accordance with established rules, principles, or standards.
- Synonyms:
- sanctioned
-
born in wedlock or of legally married parents.
legitimate children.
-
in accordance with the laws of reasoning; logically inferable; logical.
a legitimate conclusion.
- Synonyms:
- valid
-
resting on or ruling by the principle of hereditary right.
a legitimate sovereign.
-
not spurious or unjustified; genuine.
It was a legitimate complaint.
-
of the normal or regular type or kind.
-
Theater. of or relating to professionally produced stage plays, as distinguished from burlesque, vaudeville, television, motion pictures, etc..
an actor in the legitimate theater.
verb (used with object)
-
legitimates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
legitimated,
past participle, past
-
legitimating
present participle
-
to make lawful or legal; pronounce or state as lawful.
Parliament legitimated his accession to the throne.
- Synonyms:
- legalize
-
to establish as lawfully born.
His bastard children were afterward legitimated by law.
-
to show or declare to be legitimate or proper.
He was under obligation to legitimate his commission.
-
to justify; sanction or authorize.
His behavior was legitimated by custom.
noun
-
the legitimate, the legitimate theater or drama.
-
a person who is established as being legitimate.
adjective
-
born in lawful wedlock; enjoying full filial rights
-
conforming to established standards of usage, behaviour, etc
-
based on correct or acceptable principles of reasoning
-
reasonable, sensible, or valid
a legitimate question
-
authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law
-
of, relating to, or ruling by hereditary right
a legitimate monarch
-
of or relating to a body of famous long-established plays as distinct from films, television, vaudeville, etc
the legitimate theatre
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
delegitimationnoun
-
legitimacynoun
-
legitimatenessnoun
-
legitimationnoun
-
postlegitimationnoun
-
delegitimateverb (used with object)
-
nonlegitimateadjective
-
quasi-legitimateadjective
-
legitimatelyadverb
-
quasi-legitimatelyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
legitimatesimple
-
legitimatessimple
-
have legitimatedperfect
-
has legitimatedperfect
-
am legitimatingprogressive
-
are legitimatingprogressive
-
is legitimatingprogressive
-
have been legitimatingperfect progressive
-
has been legitimatingperfect progressive
Past
-
legitimatedsimple
-
had legitimatedperfect
-
was legitimatingprogressive
-
were legitimatingprogressive
-
had been legitimatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of legitimate
First recorded in 1485–95, legitimate is from the Medieval Latin word lēgitimātus (past participle of lēgitimāre to make lawful). See legitim, -ate 1
Explanation
Something legitimate is the real deal — according to the law. Legitimate has other variations of meaning. To legitimate something is to make it legal, either by passing a law or publicly recognizing it as in accordance with the law. A government can be legitimized by being invited to world talks, or a movie by winning a prestigious award.
Vocabulary lists containing legitimate
The Real Deal: Synonyms for "True"
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "J," "K," and "L"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The concerns are legitimate, but far from insurmountable, and they should not require two years to resolve.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026
However, Alice’s presence forces Rebecca to reevaluate how legitimate an ally she is to other women.
From Salon ● Sep. 10, 2026
"I am taking note of the anger expressed by the employees of the Eiffel Tower, and I want to tell them that their discontent is legitimate," he wrote on X.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
“That was a funny part I laughed at,” he noted — but he still had to read them, just in case any seemed legitimate.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 5, 2026
Is it based on a misdiagnosis of a legitimate problem, such as declaring that a construction which is sometimes ambiguous is always ungrammatical?
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
“But someone like Carlson is also important because he legitimates those ideas, making them seem less radical when viewers see them.”
From New York Times ● May 15, 2022
“Selling them solidifies and legitimates the selling of our trauma,” she said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2021
“When ‘winning’ becomes everything, and winning means dehumanizing the other side for short‐term gain, it legitimates increasingly extreme behavior on both sides,” Mr. Drutman said.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 5, 2020
Blight is only partly right, in that the greatest threat to our society is a collective ignorance that legitimates forms of organized forgetting, modes of social amnesia, and the death of civic literacy.
From Salon ● Jan. 19, 2020
The fast horse, then, is aesthetically fortunate, in that the canon of pecuniary good repute legitimates a free appreciation of whatever beauty or serviceability he may possess.
From Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
The market was legitimated by its own success, as experienced in people's daily lives.
From Salon ● May 7, 2020
When Wade says he couldn’t admit what happened to him because his success and well-being in many ways legitimated the story of his entire family’s fragmentation and even his father’s suicide—that makes sense to me.
From Slate ● Mar. 3, 2019
No. No, the only absolutely clear legacy of JFK’s slaying is that it legitimated the conspiracy theorists.
From Time ● Nov. 19, 2013
The end of the legitimated spammers in a double bind of filtering and changes to the law was one rumble in spam’s tectonic shift toward an almost wholly criminal domain.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 19, 2013
The first marquess of Hamilton had a natural son, Sir John Hamilton of Lettrick, who was legitimated in 1600 and was ancestor of the lords Bargany.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 8 "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium" by Various
Mr. Kirsch identifies two recent changes that reflect a legitimating shift in attitudes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
As sociologist David Garland argues, their litigation strategy had the “unintended effect of legitimating capital punishment” and being a force for its conservation.
From Slate ● Oct. 1, 2024
"After legitimating his position in broader Israeli circles, he will proceed to the realms that not all agree on - namely the West Bank," Asa-El said.
From Reuters ● Dec. 30, 2022
Please stop legitimating him by booking and interviewing him as if anything he says is valuable.
From New York Times ● Nov. 9, 2017
Plainly, it is not a known premise legitimating a result, not a sound argument proving a conclusion: it is merely a conceit, devised to explain and fortify a theory already embraced from other considerations.
From The Destiny of the Soul A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life by William Rounseville Alger
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
