The Collaborative International Dictionary
Justify \Jus"ti*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Justified; p. pr. & vb. n. Justifying.] [F. justifier, L. justificare; justus just + -ficare (in comp.) to make. See Just, a., and -fy.]
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To prove or show to be just; to vindicate; to maintain or defend as conformable to law, right, justice, propriety, or duty.
That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
--Milton.Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify revolution, it would not justify the evil of breaking up a government.
--E. Everett. -
To pronounce free from guilt or blame; to declare or prove to have done that which is just, right, proper, etc.; to absolve; to exonerate; to clear.
I can not justify whom the law condemns.
--Shak. -
(Theol.) To treat as if righteous and just; to pardon; to exculpate; to absolve.
By him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
--Acts xiii. 39. To prove; to ratify; to confirm. [Obs.]
--Shak.(Print.) To make even or true, as lines of type, by proper spacing; to align (text) at the left (left justify) or right (right justify) margins of a column or page, or at both margins; to adjust, as type. See Justification, 4.
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(Law)
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.
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To qualify (one's self) as a surety by taking oath to the ownership of sufficient property.
The production of bail in court, who there justify themselves against the exception of the plaintiff.
--Bouvier's Law Dict.Syn: To defend; maintain; vindicate; excuse; exculpate; absolve; exonerate.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of justify English)
Usage examples of "justifying".
The habits of justifying the popular mythology against the invectives of an implacable enemy, produced in their minds some sentiments of faith and reverence for a system which they had been accustomed to consider with the most careless levity.
Cappadocia tempted the monarch to acquire in that country his fairest possessions, and either Constantine or his successors embraced the occasion of justifying avarice by religious zeal.
Instead of justifying their conduct, they deplored their weakness, professed their contrition, and cast themselves on the mercy of God and of their brethren.
Rienzi felt the importance of justifying his usurpation by a regular form and a legal title.
Christian philosophers have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the capitalistic system, the use of torture, the censorship of the press, and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort from the tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of Geneva and New England.
There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.
If you have a taste for such things and look well, you will find several reasons put forth as justifying this special designation of one day in seven.
It abandons us in this contradiction with no grounds either for preventing or for justifying murder, menacing and menaced, swept along with a whole generation intoxicated by nihilism, and yet lost in loneliness, with weapons in our hands and a lump in our throats.
He who rejects the entire past, without keeping any part of it which could serve to breathe life into the revolution, condemns himself to finding justification only in the future and, in the meantime, to entrusting the police with the task of justifying the provisional state of affairs.
From their earliest days they were incapable of justifying what they nevertheless found necessary, and conceived the idea of offering themselves as a justification and of replying by personal sacrifice to the question they asked themselves.
It is possible that Marx did not want this, but in this lies his responsibility which must be examined, that he incurred by justifying, in the name of the revolution, the henceforth bloody struggle against all forms of rebellion.
Nothing any longer checks it in its course and it reaches the point of justifying total destruction or unlimited conquest.
Its blind men entertain the puerile belief that to love one single day of life amounts to justifying whole centuries of oppression.
But to be just, without however justifying Bonaparte, I must acknowledge that the intrigues which England fomented in all parts of the Continent were calculated to excite his natural irritability to the utmost degree.
Anor took full responsibility, justifying the attack in response to the assassinations of several officials - officials he had secretly ordered killed.