Justified

How to spell justified

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce justified

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does justified mean?

1. adjectiveShown to be reasonable, fair, or defensible by good reasons.
2. adjectiveOf text, aligned so that both the left and right margins are even.

Justified in a sentence

• The manager felt his decision to cancel the project was fully justified.

• The report looked tidier once the body text was justified on both margins.

• Her anger seemed justified once the full story came out.

• She set the newsletter columns to justified rather than left aligned.

Where does justified come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin justificare, which literally meant 'to make right' or 'to do justice to', formed from justus 'just, lawful, righteous' and facere 'to make or do'. In late Latin and early Church usage it carried a strong religious sense of being declared righteous before God, and that theological flavour travelled into English through Old French justifier in the 1300s. From there the meaning broadened into the everyday idea of showing that an action or belief is reasonable and defensible. The same justus root sits inside the familiar words 'just', 'justice' and 'adjust', which is a handy reminder that the heart of the spelling is plain 'just' followed by '-ified'. The doubled trap people fall into is the middle vowel: it is spelled justi-, with an 'i', not 'justa-', and the ending is the regular '-ified' seen in words like 'classified' and 'qualified'.

How the word is built

• just- (from Latin justus: right, lawful)
• -ifi- (from facere: to make)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)