Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
✅ Lawful or proper 👶 Born in marriage 👶 To make lawful 📝 To make legal
to legitimate

to legitimate

1 5.6
To make something legal or accepted by law
  • verb
  • /lɪˈdʒɪtɪmət/
  • Formal
translation icon : legitimar
  • To legitimate their actions, the activists sought official approval from the government.
  • legitimate power
  • legitimate claims
  • serves to legitimate

And then they legitimized this because the clerics in in Pakistan, in West Pakistan said these people are racially inferior to us.

Examples

  • The past may be an instrument of domination or of resistance, a way either of legitimating or subverting established cultural systems.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Perhaps better than any other subject, the hunt legitimated the noble's supreme position in society.

    Academic text (1996)

  • By returning to higher education, the women, particularly the older women, were able to re-imagine and legitimate the self.

    Academic text (2011)

  • Even as the house serves to legitimate Mrs. Alving's image of herself, it can have the opposite effect.

    Academic text (1996)

  • For many (myself included), your criticism helps to legitimate some shows and dismiss others.

    Blog text (33)

  • The public pension system legitimates women in a number of subject positions, creating both divisions and amalgamations among women.

    Academic text (1991)

  • The Knowland Amendment legitimated a reduction of public aid during labor force shortages.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Indeed, republicanism has had a kind of afterlife as one of the legitimating ideologies of American politics.

    Academic text (1990)

  • As Nikos Kokosalakis has argued, power must always be legitimated by reference to the domains of meaning and morality.

    Academic text (1990)

  • The political system thereby became more consolidated and functionally differentiated into an economically legitimated regime.

    Academic text (1999)

Synonyms

to legalize
vsto legitimate
  • US
135 3.7

Make something allowed by law

covers both legal change and wider acceptance or justification
to validate
vsto legitimate
  • Formal
87 3.9

To make something officially acceptable by showing proof

focuses more on law or official approval rather than proof or evidence
to legitimize
vsto legitimate
  • US
40 5.8

To make something legal or officially accepted

often emphasizes acceptance and justification rather than just the act
to legitimise
vsto legitimate
  • UK
5.0

Make something legal by official approval

is broader, adding justification beyond mere law or formal approval
validated
vsto legitimate
  • Formal
4.2

Officially checked and accepted as correct or legal

refers to making something acceptable by law or official approval rather than the final state

Antonyms

to prohibit
299 3.3

To officially say that something is not allowed by law

How Official

to ratify
  • Formal
70 6.0
to authorize
489 4.4
to legitimate
  • Formal
1 5.6
to allow
∞ 1.0
to accept
793 1.0

Surface Forms

legitimate infinitive
legitimating present participle
legitimates third person singular
legitimized past
legitimized past participle

Etymology

Legitimate as a verb means to make something legal or officially acceptable, and it comes from the same root as legal, which means 'law'. So to legitimate something is to give it official approval so it is allowed.