0 to make something legal or acceptable:
The government fears that talking to terrorists might legitimize their violent actions.
1 to make something legal or acceptable
2 to make something that is not fair or honest seem acceptable:
He called efforts to legitimize medical marijuana "despicable".
Models help fill that gap, and thereby legitimize the continuation of work on theory.
Some also thought that the new training and legislation merely legitimize current practice, filling gaps in the medical workforce.
They also sent reverberations through the officer corps and the soldiery, damaging confidence among some and legitimizing the desire for revenge among others.
His social and political power was partly dependent upon his position as a paternalist and philanthropist, a position he frequently used to legitimize his candidatures.
In other words, the possibility of describing certain choral compositions almost as pre-existent music provided a solution to the aesthetic problem of legitimizing the chorus.
His evaluation of the pervasive cultural resonance of his subjects is legitimized by histories of contemporaneous cultural institutions and comparable popular entertainers.
Both a king's self and his person had to be legitimized in ancient civilizations.
This report came to play a decisive role for the new government in its need to formulate and legitimize a new course of development policy.
