verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To make illegal; to prohibit by law, to criminalize.

   "Only as recently as 1991 was the rape by a husband of his wife illegalised."

2. 2
   declare illegal; outlaw wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

criminalisecriminalizedelegitimizeillegaliseoutlawoutlaw

Antonyms

All antonyms

legalize

Example

More examples

"Only as recently as 1991 was the rape by a husband of his wife illegalised."

Etymology

From illegal + -ize or il- + legalize.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.