legal
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈliː.ɡəl/
rhymes: -iːɡəl
ipa: /ˈliɡəl/
Forms: form: more legal
form: most legal
Etymology: Borrowed from Latin lēgālis (“legal”), from lēx (“law”). Doublet of loyal and leal.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 2013 June 8, “Obama goes troll-hunting”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 55:
text: legal profession
glosses: Relating to the law or to lawyers.
examples: text: legal precedent
glosses: Having its basis in the law.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2013 August 23, “Waking life”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8850:
text: legal motion
glosses: Being established, permitted, required or prescribed by law.
examples: text: If you have no legal move, but are not in check the game is a draw.
text: Programming languages are designed so that each legal program has exactly one meaning
ref: 2021, John V. Guttag, Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python, Third Edition, page 7:
glosses: Following the rules or syntax of a system, such as a game or a programming language.
examples: text: "Is she even legal? Shame on you, diddlin' a girl too young to buy beer. You being a church deacon and all." If looks could kill, Dale would be dead.
ref: 2012 September 18, Sandra Brown, Low Pressure, Grand Central Publishing, →ISBN:
text: "Is she even legal? She looks like a minor." Elias whispers back, "Of course. I checked her passport. She's 20. What do you take me for? Be nice. I like her." I immediately smile at the girl behind Elias,[…]
ref: 2024 April 18, Ayin Quijano, Bottoms Up, Boracay (Season 2 Amihan), Ayin Quijano:
glosses: Above the age of consent or the legal drinking age.
examples: text: Whether you're interested in opening a retail marijuana store in a legal state or if you're interested in investing in someone or a company, which is operating in a legal state, there are[…]
ref: 2016 January 30, Jasper Stohner, 101 Money Making Methods in the Marijuana Madness Movement of 2016, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 45:
text: [Because] marijuana is still a federally illegal drug, using the drug in a child's presence, even in a legal state, could thus be construed as child abuse.
ref: 2019 September 13, Tracy Ferrell, Migrating for Medical Marijuana: Pioneers in a New Frontier of Treatment, McFarland, →ISBN, page 160:
glosses: Permitting the use and/or sale of cannabis; in which cannabis is lawful.
glosses: Measuring 8½ in × 14 in.
raw_tags: of paper or document layouts
glosses: Measuring 8½ in × 13 in.
raw_tags: of paper or document layouts
Coordinate terms: topics: law
word: equitable
Derived terms: antilegal
chief legal officer
counterlegal
cyberlegal
dentolegal
extralegal
hyperlegal
intralegal
juridico-legal
lagger
legal action
legal advice
legal age
legal agreement
legal aid
legal assistant
legal beagle
legal blindness
legal cap
legal capacity
legal certainty
legal chemistry
legal code
legal consequence
legal cynicism
legal duty
legal eagle
legal effect
legal entity
legal-ese
legalese
legal fiction
legal gap
legal gender
legal height
legal heir
legal high
legal hold
legal holiday
legal instrument
legal interest
legalise
Legalism
legalism
legalist
legalistic
legalitarian
legality
legalize
legally
legal name
legalness
legal notice
legal pad
legal person
legal positivism
legal professional privilege
legal recourse
legal relationship
legal remedy
legal representative
legal separation
legal sex
legalspeak
legal studies
legal system
legaltech
legal tender
legal vacuum
legal void
medicolegal
metalegal
nonlegal
paralegal
politicolegal
postlegal
prelegal
preterlegal
pseudolegal
psycholegal
quasilegal
semilegal
sociolegal
sociopoliticolegal
street-legal
sublegal
supralegal
ultralegal