Verb

To provide an acceptable explanation for.

How can you justify spending so much money on clothes?

Paying too much for car insurance is not justified .

To be a good, acceptable reason for; warrant.

Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.

* E. Everett

Unless the oppression is so extreme as to justify' revolution, it would not ' justify the evil of breaking up a government.

To arrange (text) on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned.

The text will look better justified .

To absolve, and declare to be free of blame or sin

* Shakespeare

I cannot justify whom the law condemns.

* Bible, Acts xiii. 39

By him all that believe are justified' from all things, from which ye could not be ' justified by the law of Moses.

To prove; to ratify; to confirm.

(Shakespeare)

Verb

To lie in a position directly beneath.

A stratum of clay underlies the surface gravel.

To lie under or beneath.

To serve as a basis of; form the foundation of.

a doctrine underlying a theory

*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Sarah Glaz

, title= Ode to Prime Numbers , volume=101, issue=4, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.}}

To be subject to; be liable to answer, as a charge or challenge.

* Sir Walter Scott

The knight of Ivanhoe underlies the challenge of Brian der Bois Guilbert.

(mining) To underlay.