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legitimacy

[li-jit-uh-muh-see]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

the state or quality of being legitimate.

Origin:
1685–95; legitim(ate) + -acy

Related forms

non·le·git·i·ma·cy, noun

Synonyms
lawfulness, legality, rightfulness.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To legitimacy

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Legitimacy has a plethora of syllables.

So is antidisestablishmentarianism. Does it mean:

(used as a nonsense word by children to express approval or to represent the longest word in English.)

opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established church, esp. the Anglican Church in 19th-century England.

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Example Sentences

Bashir has no legitimacy and he must stand trial for his crimes.

It's no secret that race-based affirmative action in higher education faces a crisis of legitimacy.

Both sides can easily man their trenches of legitimacy.

EXPAND

Bashir has no legitimacy and he must stand trial for his crimes.

It's no secret that race-based affirmative action in higher education faces a crisis of legitimacy.

Both sides can easily man their trenches of legitimacy.

If these people were to see their side lose, she points out, they might begin to question the legitimacy of the government itself.

My personal favorite bit of data from all of this, though, requires no calculations to lead to questions of election legitimacy.

There are certain things whose value depends largely on their legitimacy.

More important, these states would finally have acquired some degree of popular accountability and domestic legitimacy.

And some felt that by talking so much to the public, the black intellectuals risked diminishing their scholarly legitimacy.

The past few years have seen signs that the party wants to use nationalist sentiment to bolster its legitimacy.

Sorry, cherry picked data and gerry-rigged computer models have about as much legitimacy as a bible or the koran.

Thus does the new knowledge gain legitimacy and force.

The agency was initially troubled by lawsuits that challenged its legitimacy.

But scalping has also stumbled on its way to legitimacy.

There is another question, about the legitimacy of research.

It is a coercive enterprise of questionable legitimacy.

The company also hired experts who expressed deep skepticism about the legitimacy of the e-mails and contract.

The legitimacy of an appointment can be either a procedural or a moral matter.

Until you do, you can't reply to me with any authority or legitimacy.

Regardless of the deficit, tax reform is a must with respect to legitimacy.

Tesla gains legitimacy as it continues raising funds.

Some people criticized him for his stance, but the criticism had no basis in legitimacy.

Which of the two perspectives has more legitimacy depends in large part on whether the degrees in question are any good.

Fidesz shot down the measure by organising a referendum, in part as a means to destroy the government's legitimacy.

If for-profits want the same legitimacy as traditional universities, they have to be able to answer those questions.

Government hardliners would have liked prior concessions from her-notably recognising the new regime's legitimacy.

Maybe there was some legitimacy to banning some of the books on the list.

The system is meant to reinforce stability by removing doubt about the legitimacy of elected governments.

To accept the legitimacy of experiential learning is to expand the definition not only of college credit, but of college.

Delivering prosperity, party members acknowledge, is now the touchstone of its legitimacy.

Besides obvious benefits such as convenience, test banks do offer an appealing legitimacy to exam questions.

His seat in parliament gives him the legitimacy he needs for this.

He remained defiant throughout, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the court and walking out after only a brief attendance.

As the protests grow the authority and legitimacy of the regime is bound to be questioned.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.

The inquiry into the legitimacy of thousands of disability payments to retired railroad workers intensified.

Summers over the legitimacy of the professor's scholarship.

It lends to the legitimacy of our environmental movements.

The size make the new chips ideal for embedding in paper, where they could verify the legitimacy of currency or event tickets.

King is to be much admired for her accomplishments as an athlete and for her fight to achieve legitimacy for women's tennis.

And it may deafen some people to the legitimacy of your points".

Working through that organization and on his own, an investor should be able to determine the legitimacy of a fund or firm.

But many of the largest departments have yet to embrace the legitimacy of public history as an aspect.

Legitimacy must be based on more than the claim to the moral right to maximise profits.

In a conflict that depends on the popular legitimacy of a foreign military coalition waging a really long.

The battle now is between nonelected independence and electoral legitimacy.

It has become a commonplace these days to say that the party's current legitimacy rests upon economic growth.

So that's all part of the development of governance that achieves legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

It is parallel to, rather than part of, a traditional tribal structure and its source of legitimacy.

Without such a shift or some creative thinking, it is hard to see the fund winning more legitimacy among emerging economies.

But that's the central problem: the laws don't realize the legitimacy of this".

Alternatively, he can refuse to grant these doubts the legitimacy of a response.

It is also lending legitimacy to a regime that took power by force.

But given how staged the tests are, the report lends legitimacy to questions about what could go wrong in the field.

It is clearly teetering, its legitimacy under mortal threat.

Moreover, local government support helps the campuses navigate local regulations and provides legitimacy in the local market.

Apocryphal or not, there's a legitimacy to this reasoning.

Not only does he give strategic legitimacy to these ventures, he gives a tinge of operational credibility".

The system's legitimacy is said to be predicated on divine approbation as determined by the clerisy.

The propaganda pairing was clearly meant to convey an impression of strength and legitimacy.

The army has tried hard to regain legitimacy over the past decade.

Sure, this doesn't necessarily undercut anyone's intellectual capacities and legitimacy as a scholar.

Even greater problems await the victor, who could have trouble establishing his or her legitimacy.

There is one controversial issue: the legitimacy of using information from outside of the tenure/promotion package.

Granting a party the right to take part in elections does not bestow on it the seal of legitimacy.

Legitimacy is about more than the financial bottom line.

Virtually all of the scientific anthropologists are willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of humanistic perspectives.

Legitimacy always uses some form of good and bad to weed out the ambitious for their own purposes.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

legitimate

—*adj*
1.	born in lawful wedlock; enjoying full filial rights
2.	conforming to established standards of usage, behaviour, etc
3.	based on correct or acceptable principles of reasoning
4.	reasonable, sensible, or valid: a legitimate question
5.	authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law
6.	of, relating to, or ruling by hereditary right: a legitimate monarch
7.	of or relating to a body of famous long-established plays as distinct from films, television, vaudeville, etc: the legitimate theatre

—vb
8.	(tr) to make, pronounce, or show to be legitimate

[C15: from Medieval Latin lēgitimātus made legal, from lēx law]

le'gitimacy

—n

le'gitimateness

—n

le'gitimately

—*adv*

legiti'mation

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

legitimacy

1690s, of children; general use from 1836; see legitimate.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia

legitimacy

status of children begotten and born outside of wedlock. Many statutes either state, or are interpreted to mean, that usually a child born under a void marriage is not illegitimate if his parents clearly believed that they were legally married. Similarly, annulment of a marriage usually does not illegitimize the children.

Learn more about legitimacy with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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Matching Quote

"In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been "tattooed" with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the "haves.""

-Gilbert Adair

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