justify

verb

Etymology: From Middle English justifien, from Old French justifier, from Late Latin justificare (“make just”), from Latin justus, iustus (“just”) + ficare (“make”), from facere, equivalent to just + -ify.

1. To provide an acceptable explanation for.

   “How can you justify spending so much money on clothes?”

   “Paying too much for car insurance is not justified.”

2. To be a good reason behind a normally-unacceptable action; to warrant.

   “Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.”

   “Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify revolution, it would not justify the evil of breaking up a government, under an abstract constitutional right to do so.”

3. To arrange (text) on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned.

   “The text will look better justified.”

4. To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin.

   “I cannot justify whom the law condemns.”

   “And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.”

5. To give reasons for one’s actions; to make an argument to prove that one is in the right.

   “She felt no need to justify herself for deciding not to invite him.”

   “And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”

6. To prove; to ratify; to confirm.

   “She is not dead at Tarsus, as she should have been, By savage Cleon: she shall tell thee all; When thou shalt kneel, and justify in knowledge She is thy very princess.”

   “[…] say My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts to Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t.”

7. To show (a person) to have had a sufficient legal reason for an act that has been made the subject of a charge or accusation.
8. To qualify (oneself) as a surety by taking oath to the ownership of sufficient property.

   “J'USTIFYING BAIL, practice, is the production of bail in court, who there justify' themselves against the exception of the plaintiff.”