illegitimate child
11
4.9
- noun
- /ˌɪlɪˈdʒɪtɪmət tʃaɪld/
- Formal
:
hijo ilegítimo
- My heart goes out to that poor illegitimate child of hers.
- mother of an illegitimate child
And the young daughter who'd gone to the city comes back with an illegitimate child.
- And the young daughter who'd gone to the city comes back with an illegitimate child.
- This period of time, that would be me an illegitimate child.
- In this context, in that time, it means an illegitimate child.
Examples
-
More than half of women younger than 30 have what we used to call an "illegitimate" child.
Blog text (15) -
He discovered that he was an illegitimate child after his mother revealed the truth about his parentage.
-
I have one illegitimate child who is a lot like me.
-
The lady has an illegitimate child.
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Have you any illegitimate children?
-
Most women giving birth to illegitimate children were servants of scant means.
Academic text (1993) -
The Supreme Court had previously extended equal protection guarantees to illegitimate children in Levy v. Louisiana.
Academic text (2016) -
As we have already noted, an illegitimate child is denied full kinship relatedness.
Academic text (2007) -
Carrie Buck was one of several illegitimate children borne by her mother, Emma.
Academic text (2002) -
The overwhelming majority of Russia's newly emerging cohort of illegitimate children, it seems, were being raised by single mothers.
Academic text (2005)
Synonyms
58
8.2
A child born to parents who are not married, now an offensive word
11
6.5
A child born to parents who are not married to each other
1
9.9
A child whose parents are not married to each other
1
9.9
A child born when the parents are not married
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'illegitimate' directly encodes 'not legally recognized' and when combined with 'child' yields the exact meaning 'a child born to parents not legally married'; this is a straightforward adjective + noun composition that a learner can infer. Cross-linguistically many languages use a similar construction to mark non-marital birth, so the meaning is immediately derivable for a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
Illegitimate child comes from old family laws. Long ago, only children born after a wedding were called 'legitimate' and could get family rights. A child born when the parents were not married was called an illegitimate child, so today the phrase means 'a child born to parents who are not legally married'.