Illegitimate

How to spell illegitimate

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce illegitimate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does illegitimate mean?

1. adjectiveNot in accordance with the law, the rules, or sound reasoning.
2. adjectiveBorn to parents who were not married to each other.

Illegitimate in a sentence

• The auditors flagged several illegitimate transactions in the accounts.

• Old inheritance laws once denied property to illegitimate heirs.

• The committee ruled that the protest was an illegitimate use of the funds.

• The historian traced an illegitimate line in the royal family tree.

Where does illegitimate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin legitimus, meaning 'lawful' or 'in accordance with law', which was itself built on lex, the Latin word for 'law' (its stem appearing as leg-). To express the opposite, Latin used the negative prefix in-, which assimilated before the letter l to become il-, giving a sense of 'not lawful'. The combined form passed through medieval legal Latin and was adopted into English in the fifteenth century, at first chiefly to describe children born to parents who were not married to each other. From that legal beginning the meaning broadened to cover anything not sanctioned by law, rule, or accepted logic. The same lex root sits behind familiar relatives such as 'legal', 'legislate', and 'legitimate' itself, and recognising that doubled l in il-legitimate, one l ending the prefix and one beginning the root, is the key to spelling it correctly.

How the word is built

• il- (not)
• legitim- (from Latin legitimus: lawful)
• -ate (adjective suffix)