noun
definition
A person born to a legally married couple.
verb
definition
To make legitimate, lawful, or valid; especially, to put in the position or state of a legitimate person before the law, by legal means.
adjective
definition
In accordance with the law or established legal forms and requirements.
synonyms
definition
Conforming to known principles, or established or accepted rules or standards; valid.
example
legitimate reasoning; a legitimate standard or method
definition
Authentic, real, genuine.
example
legitimate poems of Chaucer; legitimate inscriptions
definition
Lawfully begotten, i.e., born to a legally married couple.
synonyms
definition
Relating to hereditary rights.
Examples of legitimate in a Sentence
It is a legitimate question that deserves a carefully reasoned answer.
Pierre will get everything as the legitimate son.
His two legitimate sons were painters of only ordinary ability.
He was four times married, and had a large number both of legitimate and illegitimate children.
Although David claims that his company is legitimate, its lack of accreditation causes me to be skeptical.
Cynthia smiled and asked, Jennifer's question is legitimate.
Y was there crowned legitimate king.
He himself was qualified to be the legitimate head of a united state, for he was of the tribe of Aaron.
In controversy he was too fond of mingling personal abuse with legitimate argument, and this weakness mars his letters, which were held in high admiration in the early middle ages, and are valuable for their history of the man and his times.
Had the Spanish government frankly accepted the situation and acknowledged the trade as legitimate, England would have had no objection to the re-establishment of the Spanish sovereignty in America.
Financial aid availability is also a legitimate concern for people looking into distance learning degrees.
This is a recognized and legitimate business risk, differing only in degree from the risks attending all business operations.
John de Courci left no legitimate children.
In Soulavie's Memoires of Richelieu (London, 1790) the masked man becomes (on the authority of an apocryphal note by Saint-Mars himself) the legitimate twin brother of Louis XIV.
Then Conradin, Frederick's grandson and last legitimate descendant of the Hohenstaufen, came into Italy, where he found many partisans among the Ghibellines of Lombardy and Tuscany, and among Manfred's former adherents in the south.
Unfortunately, many of these businesses are not legitimate.
Each of these has its legitimate province, and the extent of this province can in most cases be defined with reasonable certainty.
He certainly retains his former opinion, but mainly on the ground, in itself intelligible and legitimate, that, so far as Fichte's philosophical reputation and influence are concerned, attention may be limited to the earlier doctrines of the Wissenschaftslehre.
Du Guesclin lost his first wife in 1371, and married a second in 1373, but he left no legitimate children.
It is indisputably legitimate to speak of Ultramontanism as a distinct policy, but it is very difficult to define its essential character.
After further struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Manfredi made themselves masters of the place early in the 14th century, and remained in power until 1501, when the town was taken by Caesar Borgia and the last legitimate members of the house of the Manfredi were drowned in the Tiber; and, after falling for a few years into the hands of the Venetians, it became a part of the states of the church in 1509.
In Italy Austria retained her hold on Lombardy and Venetia, Genoa was assigned to the kingdom of Sardinia, while Parma went to Marie Louise, the legitimate heir, Carlo Ludivico, having to be content with the reversion after her death, the congress meanwhile assigning Lucca to him as a duchy; the claims of the young Napoleon to succeed his mother in Parma were only destroyed by the efforts of France and England.
Consequently the United States claimed a right to restrain such practices, both as proprietors of the seals and as proprietors and trustees of the legitimate industry.
Thus Cardinal HergenrOther holds that it was written by a Frank in the 9th century, in order to prove that the Greeks had been rightfully expelled from Italy and that Charlemagne was legitimate emperor.
Amongst the legitimate reasons for suspecting the correctness of a text are patent contradictions in a passage or its immediate neighbourhood, proved and inexplicable deviations from the standards for forms, constructions and usages (mere rarity or singularity is not enough), weak and purposeless repetitions of a word (if there is no reason for attributing these to the writer), violations of the laws of metre and rhythm as observed by the author, obvious breaks in the thought (incoherence) or disorderly sequence in the same (double or multiple incoherence).
Legitimate doubt arises when the evidence pro et contra of documental and intrinsic probability is equal, or nearly equal, or when documental probability points strongly to one side and intrinsic probability to another.
After his master's death, in the third period of his own life, and during his connexion with Alexander, but before the final construction of his philosophy into a system, he was tending to write more and more in the didactic style; to separate from dialectic, not only metaphysics, but also politics, rhetoric and poetry; to admit by the side of philosophy the arts of persuasive language; to think it part of their legitimate work to rouse the passions; and in all these ways to depart from the ascetic rigidity of the philosophy of Plato, so as to prepare for the tolerant spirit of his own, and especially for his ethical doctrine that virtue consists not in suppressing but in moderating almost all human passions.
The barons were consequently able to exact, in Magna Carta (June 1215), much more than the redress of legitimate grievances; and the people allowed the crown to be placed under the control of an oligarchical committee.
At first he professed to rule only with the advice of a council formed of the nobles, but when his power became established he dispensed with this show of republican government, and then gave himself the appearance of a legitimate title by protecting an impostor who professed to be the caliph Hisham II.
The metamorphoses of the Cirrhopoda were described and figured by him in 1830 in a very complete manner, and the legitimate conclusion as to their affinities was formulated by him.
He settled the affair in his usual downright manner, telling the commissioners bluntly that they must take back their legitimate king, and refusing - perhaps with more questionable wisdom - to allow the retention of the tricolour flag,which to him was a "symbol of rebellion."
It may be that his early death, during the great plague of 1350, at the siege of Gibraltar, only averted a desperate struggle with his legitimate son, though it was a misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who understood his subjects well enough not to go too far.
His legitimate consort was Rukmini, daughter of the king of Berar; but Radha is always associated with him in his temples.
When they are beyond a certain distance from the seat of war it seems reasonable that the presumption that they are merely carrying on their legitimate business should be considered absolute.
The effect of such interference with neutral trade, he said, would be disastrous to legitimate commerce passing from a British port in the United Kingdom to a British port in the Far East.
But several powers were arrayed against him - the duke of Savoy, who claimed the island on the strength of the marriage of his son Louis to Charlotte, the only legitimate daughter of John II., 2 the Genoese, and the pope.
The failure of legitimate male issue of the later Carolingians gave Arnulf a more important position than otherwise he would have occupied; but he did homage to the emperor Charles the Fat in 882, and spent the next few years in constant warfare with the Sla y s and the Northmen.
Those bishops, however, who had been elected under normal conditions, conformably to the old law, were deprived of the essential parts of their legitimate authority.
Canonically the election was perfectly valid; 1 so that the only popes, to be regarded as legitimate, are the successors of Urban.
Since whole universities and numerous scholars had pronounced in favour of the new theories, the Pisan synod dismissed all canonical scruples, and unhesitatingly laid claim to authority over both popes, one of whom was necessarily the legitimate pope.
Emanating from an assembly without a head, which could not possibly be an ecumenical council without the assent of one of the popes (of whom one was necessarily the legitimate pope) - enacted, in opposition to the cardinals, by a majority of persons for the most part unqualified, and in a fashion which was thus distinctly different from that of the old of John councils - they can only be regarded as a coup de XXIII.
The legitimate pope, Gregory XII., now consented to resign, but under strict reservation of the legality of his pontificate.
From 1814 to 1830 Europe witnessed the restoration The Papacy of legitimate monarchy.
The once exiled dynasties the conscientiously re-established the legitimate Church, and both conservative powers made common cause against revolutionary tendencies.
The order in Naples, which alone was afterwards recognized as the legitimate descendant of the Jerusalem community, was empowered to seize and confine anyone suspected of leprosy, a permission which led to the establishment of a regular inquisitorial system of blackmail.
On the 17th of November Elizabeth became queen of England, and the princes of Lorraine - Francis the great duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal - induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary Tudor.
These candidates, however, received no electoral votes and a popular vote of only 156,149, of which but 25,329 were polled in New York, By 1856 they abandoned their separate organization and joined the movement which resulted in the formation of the powerful Republican party, of which the Free Soil party was the legitimate precursor.
These were at once occupied by Austrian troops, with the secret consent of Charles Theodore himself, who was without legitimate heirs, and wished to obtain from the emperor the elevation of his natural children to the status of princes of the Empire.
Charlotte Stuart, who was declared legitimate and created duchess of Albany, tended her father for the remaining years of his life, during which she contrived to reconcile the two Stuart brothers, so that in 1785 Charles returned to Rome, where he died in the old Palazzo Muti on the 30th of January 1788.
Statistics of recent years show a slight increase in legitimate and a slight decrease in illegitimate births.