legend

noun

leg·end | \ ˈle-jənd

Definition of legend

1a : a story coming down from the past especially : one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable the legend of a lost continent Arthurian legends

b : a body of such stories a place in the legend of the frontier

c : a popular myth of recent origin the legend of the Loch Ness monster

d : a person or thing that inspires legends a baseball legend

e : the subject of a legend its violence was legend even in its own time— William Broyles Jr.

2a : an inscription or title on an object (such as a coin) The quarter bore the legend "In God We Trust".

b : caption sense 2b The legend identifies the various parts of the illustrated anatomy.

c : an explanatory list of the symbols on a map or chart

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Examples of legend in a Sentence

I don't believe the legends I've heard about this forest. the legend of a lost continent He has become a baseball legend. The gravestone bears the legend “Rest in Peace.”

Recent Examples on the Web

Tongue-in-cheek chants aside, Cooley is objectively a Summer League legend, competing this week for the sixth straight year. — Jake Fischer, SI.com, "The Economics of a Las Vegas Summer League Invite," 12 July 2018 At this point, the story is more or less Hollywood legend. — refinery29.com, "Sisterhood Of The Traveling...Dress? Leslie Jones’s Gown Gets A Second Life," 4 July 2018 Todd was a New Richmond High School legend who made the bigs and caught the last out of the last World Series Cincinnati was in. — Scott Springer, Cincinnati.com, "Springer: The secret to Division I sports success," 29 June 2018 Karl’s vigorous, ironic, and knowing modernity, and his long experience in the business, made him just right to colonize the legend of Mademoiselle. — Kennedy Fraser, Vogue, "From the Archives: Karl Lagerfeld, The Impresario," 19 Feb. 2019 Tonight's episode of Victoria on Masterpiece PBS shows the British monarch meeting a legend of modern medicine, Florence Nightingale, as a cholera epidemic rages on in London. — Caroline Hallemann, Town & Country, "Did Queen Victoria Really Meet Florence Nightingale?," 4 Feb. 2019 Beatty is 81, a true legend of Hollywood, from a time when the product was something more dashing than robots tackling superheroes. — Jason Gay, WSJ, "My Talk With Legendary Rams Quarterback Warren Beatty," 23 Jan. 2019 And there was also in that the legend of Teatro Campesino, which had been around in the ’60s and helped to organize. — Eric Johnson, Recode, "‘Sorry to Bother You’ director Boots Riley suspects social media platforms are hiding politics they don’t like," 8 Oct. 2018 The town also happens to be a surfer's paradise, and many legends of the sport (like Tom Curren) live here. — Condé Nast Traveler, "The Most Beautiful Towns in America," 21 Sep. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'legend.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.