Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use legitimate in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Legitimate means in accordance with the law or established legal forms and requirements. Example: “Besides his four legitimate wives, the caliph had dozens of concubines.”

Examples of legitimate by meaning

adjectiveIn accordance with the law or established legal forms and requirements.

  • Rodwell was sent off by referee Martin Atkinson - who has shown 15 red cards since the start of last season - after 23 minutes for what appeared to be a legitimate challenge on Suarez.2011 October 1, Phil McNulty, “Everton 0 - 2 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport
  • According to the tweet, the encounter began with "a traffic stop for unlawful speed." If so, then the initial stop was legitimate, but in and of itself that wouldn't be probable cause to search the car.2020 February 5, Kevin Underhill, “Bag Marked "Bag Full of Drugs" Allegedly Full of Drugs”, in Lowering the Bar, archived from the original...

adjectiveConforming to known principles, or established or accepted rules or standards; valid.

  • legitimate reasoning; a legitimate standard or method

adjectiveAuthentic, real, genuine.

  • legitimate poems of Chaucer; legitimate inscriptions
  • The truth is, when we fail to protect legitimate rights of others and continue to expand the net of lies and defamation, every one would become victims one day including ourselves.2020 December 20, Wen Sirui, “The Danger of One Voice from Mainstream Media”, in Minghui

adjectiveLegally married.

  • Besides his four legitimate wives, the caliph had dozens of concubines.

More sentences with legitimate

  • Trump has been a legitimate news figure and, thus, what he had to say should be aired.2020 December 31, Kara Swisher, “Goodbye, Twitter Trump! And Other Predictions for 2021”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry flagitious
  • Wherever legitimate tracks are found there's always some fresh scat, y'know, poo, flop, dumplings.2018, Brent Butt, “Sasquatch Your Language”, in Corner Gas Animated. From the entry poo
  • But it's hard to say what legitimate leftism might look like, in a Petersonian world.2017 June 16, David Reevely, “Tilting at Leftist Windmills”, in Ottawa Sun (Postmedia Network), →ISSN, page A11. From the entry Petersonian
  • The issue of a wife is unlawful seed; And none's legitimate, but mongrel breed.2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution, →ISBN. From the entry true-bred
  • Need to say “whatever”? ‘Jawellnofine’ is offered as the perfectly legitimate South African alternative.2010, Jerusha Sukhdeo, The jawellnofine book that is the epitome of everything South African. From the entry jawellnofine
  • Legitimate Indian passports feature a line in microprinting that reads "Indian Passport Control" across the photo page.2009 February 3, Rick Westhead, “Dozens dupe Indian airline, enter Canada”, in Toronto Star. From the entry microprinting
  • He'd throw them just long enough to get well, and then replace them with legitimate cubes.2005, Fred Cicetti, Local Angles: The Big News in Small Towns, page 78. From the entry flat
  • It's icing on the cake that automation can be achieved using legitimate, nonpirated OSS tools.2005, Chris DiBona, Danese Cooper, Mark Stone, Open sources 2.0: the continuing evolution. From the entry nonpirated
  • This is a legitimate club." ¶ "Klaatu barada nikto," I said, but it went straight past him.2003, Paul McAuley, Whole Wide World, Macmillan, page 215. From the entry Klaatu barada nikto
  • And I doubt if any jambite can get his legitimate space now because of lateness.2002, Chinedu Ogoke, Under fire: a novel, page 25. From the entry jambite
  • Contumacy · Generally speaking, contumacy is the deliberate disregard for legitimate authority.1998, Peter M. J. Stravinskas, editor, Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia, rev. edition, Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor…. From the entry contumacy
  • More legitimate and altogether more 'acribic' would have been benzyl 3-isobutyryloxy-1-isopropyl-2 2-dimethylpropyl phthalate.1998 E. W. Godly, "The need for good nomenclature" in Chemical Nomenclature, edited by K. J. Thurlow (Springer) p.24. From the entry acribic
  • Historically-sensitive writers (‘historicists’) have retorted that any legitimate logic must simply recapitulate (report) previous investigation.1989 May 18, David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, Simon Schaffer, “Justification and experiment”, in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the…. From the entry precapitulate
  • Lumperism is very common in palaeontology of late, representing a legitimate reaction to the preceding splitterism.1986, Valeriĭ Pavlovich Alekseev, The origin of the human race, page 101. From the entry splitterism
  • In legitimate comedy actresses conformed to a Victorian image of coquetry.1983, Chad Evans, “The Road to British Columbia”, in Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-century Theatrical Entertainment in the…. From the entry endearing
  • These are legitimate fruit-eaters, furthering the plant's evolutionary compromise of providing food in exchange for dispersal.1980, Jennifer Owen, Feeding Strategy. From the entry fruit-eater
  • If we could acquire language through hypnotic suggestion or through dormiphonics such expectations would be legitimate.1974, Warren C. Born, Toward Student-centered Foreign-language Programs, page 160. From the entry dormiphonics
  • All legitimate unabbreviations of a given abbreviation are congruent, and hence by Lemma 15b equivalent.1952, Stephen Cole Kleene, “[The Predicate Calculus] Replacement”, in Introduction to Metamathematics (The University Series in Higher…. From the entry unabbreviation
  • Thus it is immaterial in considering questions of deducibility and provability which legitimate unabbreviation is used.1952, Stephen Cole Kleene, “[The Predicate Calculus] Replacement”, in Introduction to Metamathematics (The University Series in Higher…. From the entry unabbreviation
  • Because really, if we can’t deal with catastrophic tail risk, then we do not have a legitimate government.2025 November 14, Kevin Roose, Casey Newton, quoting Dean Ball, “Data Centers in Space + A.I. Policy on the Right + A Gemini History…. From the entry tail risk
  • These may be entirely legitimate reasons to raise prices but the companies engaging in excuseflation are seen as exploiting the situation.2023 March 24, Daily Mail City, Finance Reporter, “INVESTING EXPLAINED: What you need to know about Excuseflation – a ploy by companies to…. From the entry excuseflation
  • Beijing claims the facilities are “vocational training centres” and says they are a legitimate response to the threat of religious extremism.2020 January 6, Laura Zhou, “Marco Rubio urges US Congress to pass Uygur bill to counter China’s crackdown in Xinjiang”, in South China…. From the entry Xinjiang
  • I suggest that anyone who is queer and feels an affinity toward femmeness has a legitimate claim to it.2019, Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze, page 113. From the entry femmeness
  • No Chinese leaders have suggested so far that reclaiming these lands could be a legitimate objective of the state’s foreign policy.2015, Michael E. O'Hanlon, “Conflicts Real, Latent, and Imaginable”, in The Future of Land Warfare, Washington, D.C.: Brookings…. From the entry Russian Manchuria
  • Canuel’s case is a legitimate religious freedom issue.2014 October 8, Tristin Hopper, “B.C. ‘pastafarian’ fights for a driver’s license, and religious freedom, with a spaghetti colander on his…. From the entry Flying Spaghetti Monsterism
  • First world problems are not legitimate problems, but the minuscule annoyances that occur on a day-to-day basis in well-off, developed countries.2012 February 13, “The ‘Top 100 First World Problems’ According to Scooter Magruder (Video)”, in Huffington Post, archived from the…. From the entry first world problem
  • Acknowledgment unstates such implications and thus seems to legitimate victims' claims and status and vindicate their status and position.2009, Joanna R. Quinn, Reconciliation(s), page 40. From the entry unstate
  • You with the guy inside?’ the shoppie says, bending his knees to talk to me confidentially. ‘Cos it was legitimate, okay?2008, Lauren Beukes, Moxyland, Jacana Media, →ISBN, pages 102–103. From the entry kak
  • Despite gazillions of copyvios, there are still valid and legitimate groups there which are not harmed in the least by this.2007 February 1, cpghost, “Re: FreeBSD Torrent Server”, in list.freebsd.questions (Usenet). From the entry copyvio
  • Significantly, the setting is a gaff, a low, illegal theatre, and not one of the legitimate East-End stages.2004, Kerry Powell, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, page 273. From the entry gaff
  • The DOC has offered no evidence to suggest that these actions were taken for any other reason, penologically legitimate or otherwise.2001, US Court of Appeals, Rauser v Horn. From the entry penologically
  • The push-poll operates under the guise of legitimate survey research to spread lies, rumors, and innuendo about candidates.1996, Larry Sabato, Dirty Little Secrets, →ISBN, page 245. From the entry push-poll
  • The majority trotted out a parade of horribles in which judicial line-drawing concerning accommodation would displace legitimate democratic choices.1992, Geoffrey R. Stone, Richard Allen Epstein, Cass R. Sunstein, The Bill of Rights in the Modern State, page 356. From the entry parade of horribles
  • In this case, the restoration is legitimate even though the gun will be a wall hanger and never be fired.1982, John E. Traister, How to Buy and Sell Used Guns, page 153. From the entry wall hanger

Meaning of legitimate

  1. adjective In accordance with the law or established legal forms and requirements.
  2. adjective Conforming to known principles, or established or accepted rules or standards; valid.
  3. adjective Authentic, real, genuine.

Full definition of legitimate

Questions about legitimate in a sentence

How do you use legitimate in a sentence?
Legitimate is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “Besides his four legitimate wives, the caliph had dozens of concubines.”
What is a short sentence with legitimate?
“legitimate poems of Chaucer; legitimate inscriptions”
What does legitimate mean?
Legitimate means in accordance with the law or established legal forms and requirements.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: legitimate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use legitimate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/legitimate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.