Word.ws English Dictionary

legitimity

legitimity is the misspelling of legitimacy.

Meaning of legitimacy

Noun

legitimacy (countable and uncountable, plural legitimacies)

  1. The quality or state of being legitimate or valid; validity.
    • The legitimacy based on a revolutionary essence was replaced by legitimacy with an ultranational, ultra-Yugoslav character.2000, Stuart Nagel, Handbook of Global International Policy, page 193
    1. (broadly) Public acceptance of an institution, such as a government, corporation, or system.
      • Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. warned that if the court failed to stop the president, its own “institutional legitimacy” would be threatened.2026 April 18, Jodi Kantor, Adam Liptak, “The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court”, in The New York Times, retrieved 22 Apr 2026
  2. Lawfulness of birth or origin; directness of descent as affecting the royal succession.

Questions about legitimity

What is legitimity the misspelling of?
Legitimity is the misspelling of legitimacy.

Words near legitimity in the dictionary

  1. legitimism
  2. legitimisms
  3. legitimist
  4. legitimistic
  5. legitimists
  6. legitimity
  7. legitimizable
  8. legitimization
  9. legitimizations
  10. legitimize
  11. legitimized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legitimity (page history and authors); legitimacy (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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