“Just” is an adverb, which is bad enough pedigree, but it is a step-adjective too as its mother remarried sometime in the 18th Century. The home situation made “just” confused, giving it a split personality and a diminished ego. It wants to please everybody and became an “easy” word. It just can’t say no. You can find just out hitting the bars looking for Mr. Write, but finding meaningless relationships, one word stands, a string of tawdry collections. Don’t become another author notched in its headboard, or worse yet, need treatment for an STD, Speaking Too Dumb. Just plays loose with time, so it’s always available to screw you up.
As an adverb it can mean now, or recently or the immediate past. It does not know what time it is, how can we expect it to tell us anything? Just is never on time, or on the money, but the slut keeps company with trash clichés like that one. It is a distant relative of the well-known outlaw “only” (from the first column) although it assumed an alias and dropped the family surname “ly,” so it could sneak around.
So many personalities, being everything to everyone, just adds nothing to any passage, as in “just in the nick of time.” What does it add to that nick of time? Nothing. Just comes on to everyone and molds to its company, the sycophant.
It can mean exactly as in “this is just how you do it,” but just is so vague that it can never be exact. It’s a fuzzy – not a fussy – word, and it infects the sentence with fuzziness. How can it be exact or even relatively accurate? “I’ll meet you just when the sun sets.” Does that mean when the sun touches the horizon, or is half blocked or completely gone? That’s exact? Just knows nothing so it can’t tell you anything. The literary equivalent of a the dumb blonde moll.
Writers use it for emphasis, as in “do it just for me.” Does that mean for my sake, or in my name, or for my benefit, or in my stead, or so that I solely see, or whatever. It’s just too fuzzy, too confusing and where was I? I’m just fed up.
Just is so confused that it needs some help from a psychologist or psychiatrist. Look at all its personalities: just, justly, just about, just like that, just so, just now, just this moment, just for me, and just anytime. They cover so much territory that just can fit in to any sentence and not change a thing. And that is just the problem. Just brings banality, not uniqueness. It’s a false friend. “Just” is confused with its multiple meanialities. It could star in a Betty Davis movie.
But years of therapy won’t help this poor be knighted Hindu. As an adjective, just brings in more meanalities for the word-doctors to treat, gaining its just desserts. A long stay under therapeutic evaluation, so that it cannot harm anyone’s prose. Adjectives, in general, are stronger than adverbs, but this recalcitrant word wants to stay weak, even in adjective form, as if it were addicted to modifying verbs to weaken their resolve “he justly swung the axe to free the maiden.” Then it picks on its own kind by modifying other adverbs, the cannibal.
As an adjective it can mean fair, or morally correct or reasonable. Why doesn’t it do the just thing and seek help in a sanitarium where it can be removed from our writing. Let another person become responsible from releasing it on the unsuspecting public, its just incurable.
