decriminalize

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

UK politics: legislation & law-making
abolish
abrogate
abrogation
amendment
assemblyman
constitutionally
enact
First Minister's Questions
FMQs
gold plate
Green Paper
guillotine
penal reform
PMQs
pocket veto
presiding officer
Prime Minister's Questions
promulgate
sanction
writ

legitimize | American Dictionary

legitimize
verb[ T ]
us/ləˈdʒɪt̬·əˌmɑɪz/(alsolegitimate, us/ləˈdʒɪt̬·əˌmeɪt/)
to make something legal or acceptable

legitimize | Business English

legitimize
verb[ T ]
(UK alsolegitimise)uk /ləˈdʒɪtɪmaɪz/us
to make something that is not fair or honest seem acceptable:
He called efforts to legitimize medical marijuana "despicable".
LAW
to make something operate in a way that is legal:
Many registered companies maintain that the licensing process is the only way to legitimize the industry.

Examples of legitimize

legitimize
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.
In the case of participants, the discourse has served to legitimize those linked to the environmental and traditional indigenous foci.
In particular, the role of political parties as legitimizing agents during periods of rapid economic and social change, is crucial.
In his view all bureaucracies conceal certain kinds of politics and legitimize certain kinds of power relationships in their day-to-day operations.
Instead, he legitimizes his dream scenes by presenting a biographical narrative explaining the crime.
There are many who are critical of the ability of majoritarian institutions to legitimize decisions of the state.
Rather, the second clause is presented as a factor which legitimizes the speaker's making the speech act of an offer.
Rather, the concern has been to show how a monarchical and autocratic regime manifested and legitimized itself in the public sphere.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.