Other forms: justified, justifying, justifies
To justify something is to show it was the right thing to do — to give reasons good enough that people stop objecting. A manager justifies the cuts to her staff; you justify spending that much on a coat to yourself, in the shop, before you buy it.
It goes with a noun or an -ing form: justify the decision, justify sacking him, justify yourself. It is stronger than explain — you explain why something happened, you justify that it was acceptable — and a learner who swaps them will sound defensive by accident. The noun is justification, and the adjectives are justified and justifiable: 'her anger was entirely justified', 'a justifiable risk'. It has a printing life as well, where to justify text is to space the words so both edges of the column run straight, which is what the Justify button in a word processor does. The old proverb 'the end justifies the means' is the argument that a good result excuses a bad method.
1verbdefendTo show that something is right or reasonable.
“She had to justify the delay to a room full of angry customers.”
2verbjustifyTo be a good enough reason for something.
“The results justify the money spent on the trial.”
3verbspaceTo space out printed text so that it lines up evenly at both margins.
“The paragraph is justified on both sides, which is why the gaps look odd.”
Justify is Latin justificare, 'to make just' — justus, 'just', bolted to -ficare from facere, 'to make'. It reached English through Old French justifier. The shape survives in a whole row of English verbs: to simplify is to make simple, to purify is to make pure, to justify is to make a thing just.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
justificare — make just
Old French
justifier
Middle English
justifien
English, today
justify
Built from
From Middle English justifien, from Old French justifier, from Latin justificare (“make just”), from Latin justus, iustus (“just”) + ficare (“make”), from facere, equivalent to just + ify.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA