On 'just'
Companion to 'anyway.' The four jobs a four-letter word does — diminishing, defending, insisting on simplicity, and (rarely) intensifying. What it leaks about the sentence that follows.
After anyway, the small word I keep finding myself drawn to is just. It is a more delicate piece of social machinery, doing several jobs at once, none of them visible without slowing down.
The first job of just is to diminish. I have a quick question and I just have a quick question are different requests. The second is smaller. It says: I am not asking for much. I am only asking for this. The diminishment is preemptive — it manages the reader’s expectation before they have a chance to form one.
The second job of just is to defend. I was just trying to help is not the same as I was trying to help. The just deflects a possible accusation that the speaker has overstepped. It pre-justifies. It says: my intentions were modest; do not read too much into what I did.
The third job of just is to insist on simplicity. Just try it and try it sound similar but feel different. The just says: don’t overthink this. The thing I am asking is small. The hesitation you might be having is not warranted.
The fourth job of just is, paradoxically, to claim importance. This is just the kind of thing I love is not a diminishment; it is an intensification. Just here means exactly, and the word’s usual self-effacing register is wholly absent. Same four letters, opposite work.
There is also the just of immediacy — I just saw her, meaning recently. And the just of fairness — that’s not just, meaning not fair. These are older meanings, and they sit underneath the more contemporary uses like substrate.
What I find interesting about just is how often it is used by people who don’t realize they’re using it. Stylistic editors strike it from drafts because it weakens claims. Salespeople are trained to remove it from emails because it sounds tentative. I just wanted to follow up becomes I wanted to follow up, which becomes Following up. With each cut, the sentence becomes more confident and less polite. The hedging is gone, but so is the social handshake.
I notice it because I produce just often when I am being asked to do something I am not sure I can do. The word leaks in. I’ll just try this is an admission I would not make if I sat with it for a moment. The leak is the interesting part — it tells me something about the state of the sentence I am about to write, before I write it. The just is the sentence flinching before it lands.
There is, I think, a small honesty in just. The honest version of the word says: this is smaller than you might expect. Believe me. Take it on those terms.
The dishonest version is a verbal tic that doesn’t mean anything — pure social padding, eroding the claims it surrounds without doing any of just’s real work. The trick is telling them apart.