Legitimate

How to spell legitimate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce legitimate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does legitimate mean?

1. adjectiveConforming to the law, or genuine and able to be justified.
2. verbTo make something lawful or acceptable, or to give it official authority.

Legitimate in a sentence

• adjective

  The buyer asked for proof that the business was a legitimate operation.

• verb

  The new statute will legitimate a practice that was once banned.

• adjective

  She had a legitimate reason for missing the meeting.

• verb

  A public vote can legitimate the leader's authority.

Where does legitimate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin legitimus, meaning 'lawful' or 'according to law', which was built on lex (stem leg-), the ordinary Latin word for 'law'. Medieval Latin reshaped it into legitimatus, the past participle of legitimare 'to make lawful', and English took the adjective in the fifteenth century, first in the narrow legal sense of a child born to married parents. From there the meaning broadened to cover anything genuine, valid, or properly justified. The same leg- root for 'law' still sits inside familiar relatives such as 'legal', 'legislate', and 'legitimacy', which is a handy memory anchor. The spelling trap is the run of unstressed vowels in the middle: the two 'i' letters and the schwa ending make it easy to drop or swap a letter, so picturing 'legit' plus the legal 'leg' helps fix it.

How the word is built

• legitim- (from Latin legitimus: lawful, from lex/leg- 'law')
• -ate (adjective/verb suffix)