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

to legitimate

1 7.7
To make a child born outside marriage legally recognized
  • verb
  • /lɪˈdʒɪtɪmeɪt/
  • Formal
translation icon : legitimar
  • The couple decided to legitimate their child by getting married after the pregnancy was announced.

Examples

  • We feel we have already been legitimated by our mothers' generation.

    Academic text (1995)

  • As a result, many unmarried couples, on learning that they were expecting a child, legitimated their expected child by marriage, either through preference or under pressure from family and church, passing off the early birth as premature (Hill 2003, 29).

    Academic text (2011)

  • Most significant is how quickly the new structure has been legitimated.

    Academic text (2002)

  • After the court ruling, the child was legitimated and given full legal rights.

  • She wanted to ensure her son was legitimized so he would inherit his father's estate.

How Legitimate

trueborn
  • Archaic
1 7.4
to legitimate
  • Formal
1 7.7
illegitimate
  • Formal
39 6.1

Surface Forms

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

Etymology

Legitimate used about a child means to give them official legal status, and the word comes from the same root as legal, meaning 'law'. So to legitimate a child is to make them lawful in the eyes of the law.