What does "illegitimate" mean?
Illegitimate: Unlawfully begotten; born out of wedlock; bastard; as, an illegitimate child.
Additional senses
- 2.Not legitimately deduced or inferred; illogical; as, an illegitimate inference.
- 3.Not authorized by good usage; not genuine; spurious; as, an illegitimate word. Illegitimate fertilization, or Illegitimate union (Bot.), the fertilization of pistils by stamens not of their own length, in heterogonously dimorphic and trimorphic flowers. Darwin.
- 4.To render illegitimate; to declare or prove to be born out of wedlock; to bastardize; to illegitimatize. The marriage should only be dissolved for the future, without illegitimating the issue. Bp. Burnet.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00