legitimize

The move is one of the boldest yet to legitimize the billions of dollars worth of gold unearthed by informal miners, a business often associated with worker exploitation and environmental damage.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 21, 2026

They appeared on “The Tonight Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show,” and were among the first crews to legitimize the art form by making a living from it.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026

“The Church cannot remain silent when violence is justified in the name of security or when religious language is used to legitimize it,” saying that the church must “defend moral clarity.”

From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2026

Cases like Lynch helped legitimize claims for Black citizenship, portraying birthright citizenship as an American tradition.

From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2026

“When I want mountains made out of molehills, when I want to legitimize their puerile actions by paying attention to them, I’ll let you know.”

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols

“Having the same last name legitimizes our family status it seems,” Glatzel said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

It also makes up two minutes and 20 seconds of a nearly two-hour movie – a triumphant peak in a performance throughout which Ferrera’s Gloria legitimizes Barbie as a power fantasy.

From Salon ● Jan. 24, 2024

It argued that the web designer’s victory in that case legitimizes the termination of a female counselor who is married to another woman due to the high school’s freedom of speech.

From Slate ● Jul. 25, 2023

“I think having them call me in and put me on the stand legitimizes my story and who I am,” she said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2023

A poor devil, but we receive him into our set, for he has talent—that legitimizes.

From The Argonauts by Jeremiah Curtin

That victory made the Myanmar native a champion questioned by some, but Van legitimized his reign by prevailing in a grueling battle against Tatsuro Taira last May, stopping his challenger in the final round.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

The picture of Russia emerging triumphant and legitimized from such a deal is, ahem, at variance with reality.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 25, 2025

A genre as wide-reaching and weird as this one doesn’t need golden statues to be legitimized.

From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2025

The court is where these ideas are hatched, and it is legitimized in ways that allow Miller to go all out, 110 percent, every time.

From Slate ● Sep. 29, 2025

As if her presence legitimized whatever was hap­pening between us—though certainly not to the same degree that the general’s would have.

From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

Rather than serving as "an impartial chronographic work," the researchers suggest it may instead have functioned as "a legitimizing canon of kings, which was periodically updated to remove short-lived or parallel Neo-Assyrian rulers."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026

Luis Rivera, executive director of the nonprofit, said Measure CB risks legitimizing the illegal cannabis industry while linking city finances to the tax revenue the businesses would generate.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026

He’s legitimizing its use as psychological scaffolding, which allows a person’s cognitive development to be left perpetually unfinished.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 2, 2026

The rest of the culture was already partly there, what with our jokes identifying close co-workers as work spouses and the many TV shows legitimizing the concept of the office family.

From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2025

And so his texts played a decisive role in legitimizing the new post-Kuhnian history of science because they were wrongly read as endorsing a thoroughgoing relativism.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton