justify

How can you justify spending so much money on clothes?

Nothing can justify your rude behaviour last night.

The text will look better justified.

1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt,[…]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies.[…] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act II, scene iii]:

She felt no need to justify herself for deciding not to invite him.

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.

J'USTIFYING BAIL, practice, is the production of bail in court, who there justify' themselves against the exception of the plaintiff.