/əˈdʒʌst/
[verb] To make a small change to something so that it works better or fits more correctly. You can also adjust to a new situation, meaning you slowly get used to it.
Every time you 'adjust' something, you are secretly insisting it must be 'just' — perfectly fair and exact.
The word 'adjust' carries a hidden idea of justice inside it, and that is no accident. It comes from the Old French verb 'adjuster', which itself was built from the prefix 'a-' (meaning 'to' or 'toward') joined to 'juste', meaning 'exact' or 'right'. That French word 'juste' came from the Latin 'justus', meaning 'righteous, fair, and proper'. So at its very heart, to adjust something was to bring it into line with what is correct — to make it just.
Latin 'justus' is one of the great root words of Western language, giving English an enormous family of descendants. The chain runs in several directions: Latin 'justus' → Old French 'juste' → English 'just'; Latin 'justitia' → Old French 'justice' → English 'justice'; and Latin 'justus' → Old French 'adjuster' → English 'adjust'. The word 'adjust' entered English in the early 17th century, most likely through legal and technical writing, where precision and correctness were everything.
Interestingly, there was also a medieval Latin form, 'adjuxtare', meaning to place something next to something else so the two things line up. This idea of alignment — of making two things sit perfectly together — was central to the early meaning of 'adjust'. When a craftsman adjusted a joint in wood, or a tailor adjusted a hem, they were doing exactly this: bringing two things into perfect correspondence with each other.
Over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the word broadened considerably. It moved beyond physical fitting and alignment into the world of accounts and settlements. To 'adjust' a claim or a debt meant to settle it fairly — again, that ghost of justice hovering in the background. Insurance companies used 'adjusters' to calculate the correct amount owed after a loss, and this sense survives today in the term 'loss adjuster'.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, 'adjust' had expanded into the psychological and social world. You could now adjust not just a clock or a coat, but yourself — your habits, your expectations, your emotions. This was a striking shift: the word had moved from the physical act of tightening a bolt to the deeply human experience of finding your place in a new environment. 'Adjustment' became a key word in psychology, used to describe how people cope with change, trauma, or unfamiliar surroundings.
Today, 'adjust' sits comfortably across many different contexts — we adjust the volume, adjust our plans, adjust to a new city, or adjust our thinking. Yet buried in every one of these uses is that original Latin insistence on rightness and fairness. To adjust is, at its oldest and truest meaning, to make something the way it ought to be.