Delegitimize
verb
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To make something less legitimate. transitive
"Iran could not be happier. The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel’s colonialism rather than Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine."
- 2 To make something illegal that was previously legal. transitive
Example
More examples"Iran could not be happier. The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel’s colonialism rather than Iran’s nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine."
Etymology
From de- + legitimize.
More for "delegitimize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.