Justifiabilities

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The qualities or states that make an action or decision defensible or reasonable
2. The conditions under which an argument or claim may be deemed valid or acceptable
3. The circumstances that justify a behavior or belief in the context of moral or legal reasoning

Etymology: "Justifiabilities" is simply the plural of "justifiability," the noun for the quality of being justifiable, meaning able to be defended or shown to be reasonable. The plural form is used when someone wants to point to several distinct qualities or states that make an action defensible, rather than a single general property. The noun was formed in English from "justifiable," which itself comes from "justify," with the suffix "-ity" added to turn the adjective into a noun of quality. The ending follows the same pattern as "-ability" in words like "readability" or "probability," where "-able" adjectives gain "-ity" to form abstract nouns. The earliest recorded use of "justifiability" dates to 1795, placing it among the late eighteenth-century coinages built on the -ability model.

Synonyms: validities, rationales

Antonyms: invalidities