Word.ws English Dictionary

delegitimise

delegitimise is the alternative spelling of delegitimize.

Meaning of delegitimize

Verb

delegitimize (third-person singular simple present delegitimizes, present participle delegitimizing, simple past and past participle delegitimized)

  1. (transitive) To make something less legitimate.
    • Iran could not be happier. The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel’s colonialism rather than Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine.2014 May 4, Thomas L. Friedman, “Sheldon: Iran’s Best Friend”, in The New York Times
    Synonyms:
    delegitimate
  2. (transitive) To make something illegal that was previously legal.

Forms of delegitimise

third-person singular presentdelegitimises
present participledelegitimising
past participledelegitimised
pastdelegitimised

Origin of delegitimise

From de- + legitimise.

Questions about delegitimise

What is delegitimise the alternative spelling of?
Delegitimise is the alternative spelling of delegitimize.

Words near delegitimise in the dictionary

  1. delegitimatized
  2. delegitimatizes
  3. delegitimatizing
  4. delegitimisation
  5. delegitimisations
  6. delegitimise
  7. delegitimised
  8. delegitimises
  9. delegitimising
  10. delegitimization
  11. delegitimizations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: delegitimise (page history and authors); delegitimize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “delegitimise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/delegitimise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.