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Legal vs Legitimacy - What's the difference?

legal | legitimacy |

As an adjective legal

is legal, lawful.

As a noun legitimacy is

the quality of being legitimate or valid; validity.

legal

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Relating to the law or to lawyers.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.}}
  • Having its basis in the law.
  • Being allowed or prescribed by law.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-23, volume=408, issue=8850, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Waking life , passage=After 50 years, legal segregation is a distant memory, and race in America is not the unbridgeable chasm it once was. The country has a black president. The sort of comity that King evoked, in which the descendants of slaves and of slave owners “sit down together at the table of brotherhood”, can be found in many places, including the Deep South. The rate of marriage between blacks and whites is rising.}}
  • (informal) Above the age of consent or the legal drinking age.
  • Antonyms

    * (allowed) banned, contraband, disallowed, forbidden, illegal, outlawed * (concerning law) black-market, back-alley * (over age of consent) underage

    Derived terms

    * legal beagle * legal duty * legal eagle * legality * legalese * paralegal

    Noun

    (-)
  • (US, Canada) Paper]] in sheets 8½ in × 14 in (215.9 [[millimetre, mm × 355.6 mm).
  • Derived terms

    * legal-size

    Statistics

    * ----

    legitimacy

    English

    Noun

    (head)
  • the quality of being legitimate or valid; validity
  • Synonyms

    * legitimateness (much less common)