validity

noun

va·lid·i·ty | \ və-ˈli-də-tē

, va-\

Definition of validity

: the quality or state of being valid: such as

a : the state of being acceptable according to the law The validity of the contract is being questioned. What the federal courts have ruled … is that renunciations made behind barbed wire were essentially under duress, and thus of no legal validity.— Roger Daniels

b : the quality of being well-grounded, sound, or correct the validity of an argument/theory Other researchers have questioned the validity of the test results. Later he acknowledged that there was no validity to his report.— David Hiltbrand

Examples of validity in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Unfortunately, many female candidates running this election cycle came to realize that there was validity to their fears that voters would perceive them negatively. — Julie Zeilinger, Marie Claire, "The Women Who Ran...and Lost," 24 Oct. 2018 There is no validity to the idea that the song references me personally. — Fox News, "Gwyneth Paltrow denies Amber Rose’s theory that she’s ‘Becky,’ slept with Jay-Z," 2 Oct. 2018 There is also some validity to the Fultz-Tatum angle, although nothing about what happened changed what was already true. — David Murphy, Philly.com, "From Jayson Tatum to Brad Stevens' coaching, an inconvenient loss for Sixers on many levels | David Murphy," 7 May 2018 For Jackson, this called into question LIGO's ability to sufficiently distinguish between signal and noise and, hence, the validity of the detection itself. — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, "No more doubts: Two independent studies confirm LIGO’s Nobel discovery," 16 Dec. 2018 In 1991 during a similar hearing, one of my Republican colleagues in this committee stated these claims were taken seriously by having the Federal Bureau of Investigations launch an inquiry to determine their validity. — Alvin Chang, Vox, "Every time Ford and Kavanaugh answered the question — and didn't answer the question," 28 Sep. 2018 One way in which media outlets check the validity of social media accounts is to check whether the photos used as the accounts’ avatars exist online. — Philip Bump, Washington Post, "Here are the tools that could be used to create the fake news of the future," 12 Feb. 2018 Whatever the validity of comparisons between 1942 and 2018, there are today few places better to contemplate the issue than Manzanar. — Rick Hampson, USA TODAY, "Celebrating Independence Day in America's detention camps – during World War II and now," 2 July 2018 The burden of proof was on me, and at stake was my family’s support, the validity of my faith and my character. — Hännah Ettinger, Houston Chronicle, "Ending an abusive marriage is hard. Ending one in the evangelical church is harder.," 12 May 2018

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