[lee-guh
l] 
| 1. | permitted by law; lawful: Such acts are not legal. |
| 2. | of or pertaining to law; connected with the law or its administration: the legal profession. |
| 3. | appointed, established, or authorized by law; deriving authority from law. |
| 4. | recognized by law rather than by equity. |
| 5. | of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the profession of law or of lawyers: a legal mind. |
| 6. | Theology.
|
| 7. | a person who acts in a legal manner or with legal authority. |
| 8. | an alien who has entered a country legally. |
| 9. | a person whose status is protected by law. |
| 10. | a fish or game animal, within specified size or weight limitations, that the law allows to be caught and kept during an appropriate season. |
| 11. | a foreigner who conducts espionage against a host country while working there in a legitimate capacity, often in the diplomatic service. |
| 12. | legals, authorized investments that may be made by fiduciaries, as savings banks or trustees. |
| le·gal (lē'gəl) adj.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin lēgālis, from lēx, lēg-, law; see leg- in Indo-European roots.] le'gal·ly adv. |
LEGAL
legal
Loosely used to mean "in accordance with all the relevant rules", especially in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. "The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C." "This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed." Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of "natural laws" to achieve a desired objective. Their use of "legal" is flavoured as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare language lawyer, legalese.
[The Jargon File]