| a. | 1. | Accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements; lawful; |
| 2. | Lawfully begotten; born in wedlock. | |
| 3. | Authorized; real; genuine; not false, counterfe`t, or spurious; | |
| 4. | Conforming to known principles, or accepted rules; | |
| 5. | Following by logical sequence; reasonable; | |
| v. t. | 1. | To make legitimate, lawful, or valid; esp., to put in the position or state of a legitimate person before the law, by legal means; |
| Verb | 1. | legitimate - make legal; "Marijuana should be legalized" Synonyms: decriminalise, decriminalize, legalise, legalize, legitimatise, legitimatize, legitimise, legitimize |
| 2. | legitimate - show or affirm to be just and legitimate | |
| 3. | legitimate - make (an illegitimate child) legitimate; declare the legitimacy of (someone); "They legitimized their natural child" | |
| Adj. | 1. | legitimate - of marriages and offspring; recognized as lawful Antonyms: illegitimate - of marriages and offspring; not recognized as lawful |
| 2. | legitimate - in accordance with reason or logic; "a logical conclusion" Synonyms: logical | |
| 3. | legitimate - in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles; "legitimate advertising practices" | |
| 4. | legitimate - authorized, sanctioned by, or in accordance with law; "a legitimate government" |
LEGITIMATE. That which is according to law; as, legitimate children, are lawful children, born in wedlock, in contradistinction to bastards; legitimate authority, or lawful power, in opposition to usurpation.
acceptable, actionable, actor-proof, admissible, all-star, allowable, applicable, authoritative, authorize, authorized, ballet, balletic, binding, by law, candid, card-carrying, certify, cinematic, cinematographic, cogent, competent, condonable, consistent, constitutional, credible, de jure, defensible, dinkum, dispensable, dramatic, dramatical, dramaturgic, excusable, exemptible, expiable, fair, film, filmic, following the letter, forgivable, genuine, good, ham, hammy, histrionic, honest, honest-to-God, inartificial, inoffensive, judicial, juridical, just, justiciable, justifiable, kosher, lawmaking, legalize, legislative, legit, legitimatize, legitimize, legitimized, licit, lifelike, literal, logical, melodramatic, milked, monodramatic, movie, natural, naturalistic, operatic, original, overacted, overplayed, pardonable, permissible, plausible, pure, rational, realistic, reasonable, remissible, sanction, sanctionable, sanctioned, sane, scenic, self-consistent, sensible, simon-pure, simple, sincere, solid, sound, spectacular, stagelike, stageworthy, stagy, starstruck, statutory, stellar, sterling, substantial, sufficient, sure-enough, theaterlike, theatrical, thespian, thrown away, true to life, true to nature, true to reality, unaffected, unassumed, unassuming, uncolored, unconcocted, uncopied, uncounterfeited, underacted, underplayed, undisguised, undisguising, undistorted, unexaggerated, unfabricated, unfanciful, unfeigned, unfeigning, unfictitious, unflattering, unimagined, unimitated, uninvented, unobjectionable, unpretended, unpretending, unqualified, unromantic, unsimulated, unspecious, unsynthetic, unvarnished, validate, vaudevillian, venial, verbal, verbatim, veridical, verisimilar, vindicable, warrant, warrantable, weighty, well-argued, well-founded, well-grounded, wholesome, within the law, word-for-word