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legal meaning

EN[ˈliː.ɡəl]
US
  • Noun
    1. INF The legal department of a company.
      1. Legal wants this in writing.
    2. (US, Canada) Paper in sheets 8½ in × 14 in (215.9 mm × 355.6 mm).
    3. AdjectiveCOMmore legalSUPmost legal
      1. Relating to the law or to lawyers.
        1. 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.
      2. Having its basis in the law.
        1. legal precedent ‎
      3. Being allowed or prescribed by law.
        1. 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.
      4. INF Above the age of consent or the legal drinking age.
      5. More Examples
        1. Used in the Middle of Sentence
          • [ … ] Gov. Eliot Spitzer has made New York the latest state to travel down a murky legal road, to a place where laws are made not in response to facts, but to wishfulness and fear.
          • Director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967, Mrs. Krug was a national leader in several legal cases that rose to the Supreme Court.
          • I was going to sue, until my legal advisors told me to back off.

      Meaning of legal for the defined word.

      Grammatically, this word "legal" is an adjective. It's also a noun, more specifically, a singularia tantum.
      • Part-of-Speech Hierarchy
        1. Adjectives
          • Nouns
            • Singularia tantum
              • Uncountable nouns
          Difficultness: Level 1
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          Easy     ➨     Difficult
          Definiteness: Level 9
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          Definite    ➨     Versatile
          Related Links:
          1. en legally
          2. en legalize
          3. en legalese
          4. en legalization
          5. en legalism
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