legitimacy.

1. The quality of being justified or accepted as rightful under relevant norms.

2. The status of being regarded as born within a legally recognized marriage under a particular legal or historical system.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• institutional legitimacy
• legitimacy of a claim

On the page

Institutional legitimacy was disputed even though the office retained legal powers.

The legitimacy of the claim depended on the rule used to assess it.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Usually uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: requirements and constraints, institutional organization, formal assessment, system properties. Disciplines: academic writing, formal analysis, institutional studies. Commonness: moderately common.