legal
/ˈli.ɡəl/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.08 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Being established, permitted, required or prescribed by law.
Example Sentences
- "legal profession"
- "According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle."
- "legal precedent"
- "legal motion"
- "In South Africa, it’s still legal to “trophy hunt” the white rhino, which [Anna] Merz and others find reprehensible."
- "After 50 years, legal segregation is a distant memory, and race in America is not the unbridgeable chasm it once was. The country has a black president. The sort of comity that King evoked, in which the descendants of slaves and of slave owners “sit down together at the table of brotherhood”, can be found in many places, including the Deep South. The rate of marriage between blacks and whites is rising."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *lḗǵs? Proto-Indo-European *legʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *lḗgʰs? Proto-Italic *lēks Latin lex Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin lēgālislbor. English legal Learned borrowing from Latin lēgālis (“legal”), from lēx (“law”). Doublet of loyal and leal.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈli.ɡəl/
- British English: /ˈliː.ɡəl/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Law.