- 1
To provide an acceptable explanation for.transitive
- 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.transitive
- Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.
- 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.transitive
- The text will look better justified.
- 4
To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin.transitive
- 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.reflexive
- She felt no need to justify herself for deciding not to invite him.
- 6
To prove; to ratify; to confirm.transitive
- 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.
syn. vindicate