Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The quality or condition of being illegitimate.
- noun Offensive The condition of being born to parents not married to each other.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state or character of being illegitimate; specifically, bastardy; spuriousness: as, the illegitimacy of a child; the illegitimacy of an argument.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The state of being illegitimate.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The state or condition of being
illegitimate
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the status of being born to parents who were not married
- noun unlawfulness by virtue of not being authorized by or in accordance with law
Etymologies
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Examples
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When his illegitimacy is finally exposed, hopefully all the damage can be reversed!
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Mexican-American illegitimacy is much higher than non-Hispanic white illegitimacy.
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Mostly because of a large increase in illegitimacy since 1970, Lykken says, "across the land, but mainly in the inner cities, thousands of children aren't being brought up by, but only domiciled with, parents who are indifferent, incompetent, or unsocialized themselves."
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Mostly because of a large increase in illegitimacy since 1970, Lykken says, "across the land, but mainly in the inner cities, thousands of children aren't being brought up by, but only domiciled with, parents who are indifferent, incompetent, or unsocialized themselves."
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[235: 1] The word illegitimacy is derived from the Latin _illegitimus_, meaning "not in accordance with law."
Women's Wild Oats Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards 1897
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The growth in Hispanic illegitimacy is especially important because Hispanics keep increasing as a share of all new births, married or unmarried, up from 14.3 percent in 1990 to 23.8 percent in 2005 to 24.6 percent in 2007.
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The growth in Hispanic illegitimacy is especially important because Hispanics keep increasing as a share of all new births, married or unmarried, up from 14.3 percent in 1990 to 23.8 percent in 2005 to 24.6 percent in 2007.
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Ascribing an intrinsic power differential to acts of appropriation, meanwhile, only obscures the specific act -- the "taking possession" -- and its questionable ethical nature -- its "illegitimacy" -- behind wider isues of political inequity which are arguably more important but more nebulous.
More on Cultural Appropriation Hal Duncan 2006
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However, illegitimacy is a far less useful statistic than teen pregnancy, since unmarried 30-somethings having children isn’t exactly a social crisis, and 18-year-old girls running off to get married aren’t exactly enhancing their career prospects.
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The stigma of so-called illegitimacy, parents not married when child was born, has been the cause of so many evils.
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