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Glite Dictionary
🧪 To spoil quality ⚖️ To declare illegitimate
to bastardize

to bastardize

1 9.9
To say a child is not legally the parents' child
  • verb
  • /ˈbæstərˌdaɪz/
  • Offensive
translation icon : bastardizar (ofensivo, arcaico)
  • When the king was divorced, he effectively chose to bastardize his daughter in the eyes of the law.

Examples

  • After the scandal, the royal family sought to bastardize the prince, resulting in significant legal implications.

  • The court decided to bastardize the child, leaving him without any legal rights.

  • Language corrupted, bastardized.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Regrettably, even some of the ethics literature does not clearly distinguish euthanasia as defined in historical context from the bastardized definition now commonly used.

    Academic text (1997)

Surface Forms

bastardize infinitive
bastardized past
bastardized past participle
bastardizing present participle
bastardizes third person singular

Morphology

bastardize = bastard (transparent) = bastard + ize

Formed by the noun 'bastard' + productive verb-forming suffix '-ize' with the literal meaning 'to make or declare (someone) a bastard', so the derivation is directly recoverable.

Etymology

Bastardize originally meant to make someone a bastard, a child 'born out of marriage'. One old idea says the word bastard comes from a phrase meaning 'born on a pack saddle', used for children of travellers. So historically to bastardize was to declare a child illegitimate.