Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The condition of being born to parents not married to each other.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being a bastard, or begotten and born out of lawful wedlock.
  • noun The act of begetting a bastard.
  • noun A judicial proceeding to determine the paternity of a bastard child and compel its father to support it.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state of being a bastard; illegitimacy.
  • noun The procreation of a bastard child.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun law The condition of being illegitimate, of being born to an unmarried woman or as the fruit of adultery.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the status of being born to parents who were not married

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Certainly, these fees may have been inflated by the fact that they were being charged in bastardy cases; most likely, amounts charged outside the framework of litigation were lower, if fees were charged at all.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • Note 137: Note that these were fees for medical attendance, not witness fees, as were often allowed in bastardy and fornication matters in courts in colonial America. back

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • Certainly, the local courts acknowledged midwives 'claims for fee payment and recognized midwifery expenses as legitimate claims in bastardy cases.

    Gutenber-e Help Page 2005

  • 157 Amongst Moslems bastardy is a sore offence and a love-child is exceedingly rare.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Originally a similar term was used to refer to the soundness of the family, to indicate that there was no genealogical defect such as bastardy or non-kosher priests.

    Female Purity (Niddah). leBeit Yoreh 2009

  • Thus, the concepts of adultery, illegitimacy or 'bastardy' were legally inapplicable to slaves; and in a system where paternity functioned chiefly to regulate the passage of property rights and citizenship, the notion of slaves as progenitors of their own families was judicially beside the point.

    Background Documents 2000

  • In his judgment the cause was due to "bastardy," to the mixing of Roman blood with that of neighboring and subjective races.

    Popular Science Monthly Oct, Nov, Dec, 1915 — Volume 86 Anonymous

  • 'bastardy' were legally inapplicable to slaves; and in a system where paternity functioned chiefly to regulate the passage of property rights and citizenship, the notion of slaves as progenitors of their own families was judicially beside the point.

    Editorial 2001

  • During this period, the population of Philadelphia almost tripled, but “bastardy” increased tenfold.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • Upper-class moralists blamed the rise in bastardy on irresponsible fornication among the lower classes.

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

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