Illegitimacy

Definitions: Illegitimacy

Illegitimacy

Noun

1. The status of being born to parents who were not married.

2. Unlawfulness by virtue of not being authorized by or in accordance with law.

Date "illegitimacy" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1862. (references)

Domain	Definitions
Health	The state of birth outside of wedlock. It may refer to the offspring or the parents. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Illegitimacy was a term in common usage for the condition of being born of parents who are not validly married to one another; the legal term is bastardy. That status could be changed (in either direction) by civil law or canon law (see Princes in the Tower for an example of the former). In some locations, marriage of an illegitimate child's parents after his or her birth results in his or her legitimation.

In many societies the law did not (or does not) give illegitimate persons the same rights of inheritance as legitimate ones, and in some, not even the same freedoms. In Victorian England, for example, illegitimacy carried a strong social stigma among middle class people, as it did in the United States then, as well. As recently as the 1940s and 1950s there, unwed mothers were strongly encouraged to give their children up for adoption. Oft times, an illegitimate child would be raised by grandparents or married relatives as the "sister" or "nephew" of the unwed mother, just as in medieval and Renaissance Europe priest's children (especially bishop's and pope's children) were usually called their "nephews," giving us the term "nepotism". In those cultures the fathers of bastard children did not incur the same censure nor, generally, much legal responsibility.

By the latter third of the 20th century in the U.S., all the states had adopted uniform laws that codify the responsibility of both parents to provide support and care for a child regardless of their parents' marital status and giving illegitimate (and adopted) persons the same rights to inherit their parents' property as anyone else. Generally speaking in the United States illegitimacy has been surplanted by the concept "born out of wedlock". One does not speak of a child being illegitimate, all children are equally legitimate.

Today the word "bastard" remains both a pejorative epithet and an acceptable adjective for describing odd-sized objects or parts, such as bolts with non-standard threads.

Synonyms: Illegitimacy

Synonyms: bar sinister (n), bastardy (n). (additional references)

Antonym: legitimacy (n). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Illegality	Illegality, informality, unlawfulness, illegitimacy, bar sinister.
Undueness	Falseness; Adjective: emptiness of title, invalidity of title; illegitimacy.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Illegitimacy

English words defined with "illegitimacy": Illegitimation. (references)

Domain	Title
Books	Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Noncomformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, the Unit (reference) Measuring Immorality : Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Title	Author	Quote
Les Miserables	Hugo, Victor	He suspected indeed some illegitimacy.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Subject	Topic	Quote
Women	Philippines	The Family Code provides that in child custody cases resulting from divorce in another country, annulment, or illegitimacy, children under the age of seven are placed in the care of the mother unless there is a court order to the contrary. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

"Illegitimacy" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Illegitimacy" is used about 77 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	100%	77	37,929

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "illegitimacy"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		të qenët i paligjshëm, paligjshmëri (illegality), lindje e paligjshme. (various references)

Arabic		‏النغولة فساد النسب, ‏اللاشرعية (bastardy), ‏إنجاب ولد غير شرعي. (various references)

Bulgarian		незаконност (illegality), нелогичност (hole, illogicality, inconsequence), погрешност (erroneousness, fallaciousness, falseness, falsity, incorrectness, mistakenness, perversity, viciousness), положение на незаконороден. (various references)

Chinese		非法 (Adulterous, illegal, illegitimate, lawless, lawlessness, Wrongful, Wrongfully). (various references)

Czech		nelogický (illegitimate, illogical, inconsequential, irrational), nelegitimnost. (various references)

Farsi		غیرمشروعی , حرامزادگی (Bastardization). (various references)

French		illégitimité. (various references)

German		unehelichkeit (bastardy). (various references)

Greek		αθέμιτο (illicitness). (various references)

Hebrew		ממזרות (bastardy), אי ל�'יטימיות, אי חוקיות (illegality, lawlessness). (various references)

Hungarian		törvénytelenség (anomie, illegality, public wrong), jogtalanság (abuse, amiss, injustice, lawlessness). (various references)

Italian		illegittimit� . (various references)

Manx		oainjyrys. (various references)

Pig Latin		illegitimacyay.(various references)

Portuguese		caligrafia ilegível. (various references)

Russian		неузаконенность, незаконность (illegality), незаконнорожденность. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		vanbračnost, nezakonitost (illegality). (various references)

Spanish		ilegitimidad (baseness). (various references)

Swedish		inkonsekvens (contradiction, inconsequence, inconsistency), utomäktenskaplig börd, olaglighet (illegality), bristande logik (illogicality). (various references)

Turkish		yasadışı olma (illegality), piçlik (bastardy), gayri meşruluk. (various references)

Ukranian		незаконність (illegality, lawlessness), незаконнонародженість, непослідовність (anomaly, inconsequence, inconsistency). (various references)

Vietnamese		tình trạng con đẻ hoang, sự không hợp pháp (illegatity, illicitness, illimitability), sự không chính đáng tính chất con đẻ hoang. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "illegitimacy" (pronounced i'liji"tumusē)
8	-j i" t u m u s ē	legitimacy.
6	-t u m u s ē	intimacy.
4	-m u s ē	diplomacy, pharmacy, primacy, supremacy.
3	-u s ē	accuracy, adequacy, advocacy, Argosy, aristocracy, autocracy, bureaucracy, candidacy, celibacy, confederacy, conspiracy, courtesy, degeneracy, delicacy, democracy, ecstasy, embassy, fallacy, fantasy, Geodesy, heresy, hypocrisy, idiocy, illiteracy, immediacy, inaccuracy, inadequacy, intricacy, jealousy, legacy, leprosy, literacy, lunacy, meritocracy, obstinacy, Odyssey, papacy, piracy, pleurisy, policy, privacy, prophecy, secrecy, surrogacy, theocracy.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-c-e-g-i-i-i-l-l-m-t-y"
	-2 letters: legitimacy.
	-4 letters: legality, megacity, metallic, mycelial.
	-5 letters: agilely, agility, ciliate, climate, gametic, illicit, illitic, licitly, meatily, metical, micella, militia, millage, myalgic, mycelia, tillage.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.