Justify vs Qualify - What's the difference?
justify | qualify |
To provide an acceptable explanation for.
To be a good, acceptable reason for; warrant.
* E. Everett
To arrange (text) on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned.
To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin
* Shakespeare
* Bible, Acts xiii. 39
To prove; to ratify; to confirm.
To describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.
To make someone, or to become competent or eligible for some position or task.
* Macaulay
To certify or license someone for something.
To modify, limit, restrict or moderate something; especially to add conditions or requirements for an assertion to be true.
*1598 , Shakespeare,
*:O! never say that I was false of heart,
*:Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify
To mitigate, alleviate (something); to make less disagreeable.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.vi:
To compete successfully in some stage of a competition and become eligible for the next stage.
To give individual quality to; to modulate; to vary; to regulate.
* Sir Thomas Browne
(juggling) To throw and catch each object at least twice.
(juggling) An instance of throwing and catching each prop at least twice.
As verbs the difference between justify and qualify
is that justify is to provide an acceptable explanation for while qualify is to describe or characterize something by listing its qualities.As a noun qualify is
(juggling) an instance of throwing and catching each prop at least twice.justify
English
Alternative forms
* justifie (obsolete)Verb
- How can you justify spending so much money on clothes?
- Paying too much for car insurance is not justified .
- Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.
- Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify' revolution, it would not ' justify the evil of breaking up a government.
- The text will look better justified .
- I cannot justify whom the law condemns.
- By him all that believe are justified' from all things, from which ye could not be ' justified by the law of Moses.
- (Shakespeare)
qualify
English
Verb
- He had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession.
- he balmes and herbes thereto applyde, / And euermore with mighty spels them charmd, / That in short space he has them qualifyde , / And him restor'd to health, that would haue algates dyde.
- It hath no larynx to qualify the sound.