'Just' and 'only' carry a similar meaning, and while my feel
for language usually helps me decide which one to use, there are times
when I'm at a loss.
From my understanding, 'just' is used as a softener, to add flexibility and politeness. 'Only', on the other hand, is a relatively sharp exclusion. 'Just' also has a wider range of meanings, for instance to denote time.
While this sounds simple enough, it can get messy in practical usage. The sentence that made me stumble was "Not only airports are part of the target customer group, but also other large infrastructures".
Would the meaning of this sentence change when using 'just' instead? The way I see it, there is no difference in this case, except 'just' would make it sound a tad more colloquial.
From my understanding, 'just' is used as a softener, to add flexibility and politeness. 'Only', on the other hand, is a relatively sharp exclusion. 'Just' also has a wider range of meanings, for instance to denote time.
While this sounds simple enough, it can get messy in practical usage. The sentence that made me stumble was "Not only airports are part of the target customer group, but also other large infrastructures".
Would the meaning of this sentence change when using 'just' instead? The way I see it, there is no difference in this case, except 'just' would make it sound a tad more colloquial.
Just refers to exactness. Only refers to uniqueness. In many cases, they are interchangeable. But not always.
In the phrases not just X … but also Y and not only X … but also Y, we mean that X is incomplete. That is, X is both inexact and non-unique, so either word will do. On the other hand, we say only child, not ?just child, because we mean the uniqueness, not the exactness, of the child. And we say just deserts, not ?only deserts, because we mean the exactness, not the uniqueness, of the consequence. |
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