Other forms: justifications
A justification is the reason offered for something, put forward to show it was right. The justification for the delay, no justification for that language, a justification that satisfied nobody.
In philosophy it has a stricter job: the justification for a belief is the grounds you have for holding it, and justified true belief is the classical definition of knowledge. In everyday use, the word usually appears in the negative — there is no justification for it — which is a strong way of saying something was simply wrong. Printing has a third sense with no connection to reason at all: justified text is text with straight edges on both sides, and that is what the button in a word processor does.
1nounjustificationA good reason offered for something that has been done.
“There was no justification for keeping them waiting.”
2nounlogicThe grounds on which a belief is held.
“The chapter asks what justification we have for that assumption.”
3nounprintingIn printing, the setting of text so both edges are straight.
“Full justification leaves ugly gaps in a narrow column.”
Latin iustificare is iustus, just, plus facere, to make — to make just. A justification was originally the act of making something right, not merely of arguing that it was, and the shift from doing to arguing happened entirely inside English.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
iustificationem
Middle French
justification
Middle English
justificacioun
English, today
justification
From Middle English justificacioun, justification, from Middle French justification, from Latin iustificationem < iustificatio, from iustifico, from Latin iustus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA