Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1963, "to reform a criminal," back-formation from decriminalization. Meaning "to make legal something that formerly had been illegal" was in use by 1970 (there are isolated instances back to 1867). Related: Decriminalized; decriminalizing.
Wiktionary
vb. To change the laws so something is no longer a crime. Opposite of criminalize.
WordNet
v. make legal; "Marijuana should be legalized" [syn: legalize, legalise, decriminalise, legitimize, legitimise, legitimate, legitimatize, legitimatise] [ant: outlaw, outlaw, outlaw, outlaw]
Usage examples of "decriminalize".
Exchanging needles, making condoms freely available, or decriminalizing marijuana are all experiments.
The only thing that could hurt them would be if Congress decriminalized all drugs, so the price crashed and they could be shipped legally.
Look at the Europeans: Half of them have decriminalized marijuana already and some of them are even talking about legalizing heroin.
But he adapted quickly enough, and by the time the fifth homicidal psychopath had tried his level best to kill them (that is, within the first mile) he found his voice and said, with a fair imitation of diffidence, "I didn't think they'd decriminalized murder this early.
Part of this was, as my critics claimed, because many acts had been decriminalized, so no longer counted as crimes.
PRC policy still frowned upon that as a bourgeois degeneracy, though sodomy had been decriminalized in 1998.
By restoring the individual psi-powers to decriminalized lobos, making them complete and useful citizens again.