Pronunciations (2)
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/ˈd͡ʒʌstɪfaɪ/
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ˈdʒʌstɪfaɪ
Verb
To provide an acceptable explanation for.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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How can you justify spending so much money on clothes?
Paying too much for car insurance is not justified.
More examples (2)
What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th’ Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Like all public expenditure, Access for All has to compete with other deserving demands. For example, how can you justify spending a couple of million pounds installing lifts at a station such as Achnasheen, which has 2,420 annual users, when that sum would buy a life-saving machine for a hospital? How do you decide on a minimum number of annual station users to justify that expenditure?
To be a good reason behind a normally-unacceptable action; to warrant.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.
More examples (1)
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.
Preservation of two railway routes between Belfast and Derry could no longer be justified and one of them must go.
To arrange (text) on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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The text will look better justified.
To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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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.
To give reasons for one’s actions; to make an argument to prove that one is in the right.
Usage- Reflexive
- Examples
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She felt no need to justify herself for deciding not to invite him.
More examples (1)
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.
[…] I was equally unable to justify myself and unwilling to acknowledge my errors […]
To prove; to ratify; to confirm.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (1)
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.
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.
To qualify (oneself) as a surety by taking oath to the ownership of sufficient property.
- Examples
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J'USTIFYING BAIL, practice, is the production of bail in court, who there justify' themselves against the exception of the plaintiff.
Verb
show to be right by providing justification or proof
- Synonyms
- Examples
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vindicate a claim
(used of God) declare innocent; absolve from the penalty of sin
adjust the spaces between words
- Examples
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justify the margins