Legitimate1. (a.) In accordance with law or with established standards; lawful; as, legitimate government; legitimate rights; the legitimate succession to the throne; a legitimate proceeding of an officer; a legitimate heir.
2. (a.) Lawfully begotten; born in wedlock.
3. (a.) Authorized; real; genuine; not false, counterfeit, or spurious; as, legitimate poems of Chaucer; legitimate inscriptions.
4. (a.) Conforming to known principles, or accepted rules; as, legitimate reasoning; a legitimate standard, or method; a legitimate combination of colors.
5. (a.) Following by logical sequence; reasonable; as, a legitimate result; a legitimate inference.
6. (v. t.) To make legitimate, lawful, or valid; esp., to put in the position or state of a legitimate person before the law, by legal means; as, to legitimate a bastard child.
Thesaurus Entries
acceptable, actionable, actor-proof, admissible, all-star, allowable, applicable, authentic, authoritative, authorize, authorized, ballet, balletic, binding, bona fide, by law, candid, card-carrying, certify, cinematic, cinematographic, cogent, competent, condonable, consistent, constitutional, correct, 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, lawful, lawmaking, legal, legalize, legislative, legit, legitimatize, legitimize, legitimized, licit, lifelike, literal, logical, melodramatic, milked, monodramatic, movie, natural, naturalistic, operatic, original, overacted, overplayed, pardonable, permissible, plausible, proper, pure, rational, real, realistic, reasonable, remissible, right, rightful, 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, true to life, true to nature, true to reality, unadulterated, 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, valid, validate, vaudevillian, venial, verbal, verbatim, veridical, verisimilar, vindicable, warrant, warrantable, weighty, well-argued, well-founded, well-grounded, wholesome, within the law, word-for-word