My theory was just about right, then. 
Whenever I hear sense #2, it’s from somebody with an English accent. I think it might be one of those regional things.
Really? But there’s no sense of “not” in the phrase! I’m American, and I just don’t see how sense #1 fits — but of course I believe all of you for whom this is the meaning. Language is funny.
After all, many standard negative phrases started out as something else. “Pas” means “not” in modern French (colloquially, the “ne” is no longer necessary), but is really just “step,” as in “not a step.”
(English “not” has a similar history! It was once “ne whit” - “not a thing” — and came after the REAL “not” word, which people stopped using, just like they did in French more recently).
I reckon ‘Just about’ has different meanings in the UK and USA.
I’m English and to me ‘just about’ means you do complete the task - but barely.
The geographic division isn’t so simple. I’m from the US, and this is what it means for me, too.
In the OP’s binary, I would use option 1 exclusively, but I’ve heard it used like ‘more or less’. We should be there just about 3PM could mean +/- 5-10 mins.
Yes, there is.
‘About’ doesn’t mean barely. ‘About’ means ‘close to this, but not this’. It does not mean ‘barely’.
I’m Canadian and have never once heard the phrase ‘just about’ used to mean ‘barely’. That would be just ‘just’.
Put me in this camp as well. In addition mostly I hear the phrase in a sarcastic sense IE “the <insert politician’s name here> just about made a wise move yesterday”.
Just about = only(just) close(about), but not on target. It is failure.
Yep. “Just about” refers to something that is expected to occur soon. “I’m just about there.” “We’re just about done with dinner.” “My shift is just about over.”
In the marathon example, I’d say she “almost finished” or “didn’t quite finish” if she fell short, or “just barely finished” if she made it. “Just about” doesn’t really fit either instance, but it’s closer to the first choice.
Yep, you can substitute “nearly” or “almost” for “just about” in any sentence.
And FWIW, I’ve never heard it as anything else but that sort of usage. It’s used to convey substantial completion, but not absolute completion.
There are, I think, (at least) 3 senses that I’m familiar with. 1 is for timing – something can be just about to occur. It describes a moment very close to the action occurring. She was just about to finish, she had just about finished when…, I’m just about to go to lunch. In my experience, this is never used to also mean the moment after, when constructed this way.
2 is the almost but not quite sense. To me, just about finished the race, or just about finished with a task, or I just about changed my mind, all mean close, but not quite. In my experience/usage, the example in the poll can only mean this. (To be clear, I’m not saying that it can’t be correct to use it that way – just that it doesn’t line up with my experience.)
3 is in reference to a specific amount. I have just about $100 in my change jar. We left at just about 3 o’clock. It’s just about 10 miles from here. These are the only uses where I think it can mean – in the senses I’m used to hearing/reading/using – both under and over the amount stated. This sense means it is very close to that amount, but is an estimate, and could be off in either direction by a small, perhaps impliedly insignificant, amount.
For reference, I grew up in the Southeast, and currently live in the Northwest.
Again, I believe all you folks, but I’m still very surprised. It’s a rare expression, but it evokes more common ones: the “just” part implies completion (but “only just,” that is, “barely”). The “about” part is weird, but implies “approximately” — which (as others have noted) could fall on either side of completion, but the “just” pushes it to the positive side.
The only time I recall hearing “just about” is in the fixed expression “I’ve just about had enough of you!” I can see why some people take this to mean “I will continue to tolerate you just a little longer” — hence, incompletion — but I see it as “I HAVE had enough of you (you just — you barely, but positively— crossed the line), BUT I’m nice enough to state this gently, to give you a chance to escape before I put the hammer down.”
It’s a fairly common expression around here- someone might ask if you’re finished with a task and ready to do something else, and your answer might be “I’m just about finished; I can finish when we get back.” Or… “I’m just about done; all I have left is the cosmetic stuff.”
Or maybe something like 'That food poisoning just about killed her".
None of them imply that the person is actually finished, or that they’re dead, only that they’re extremely close to it.
Yeah, same here, very common. But almost never referring to a past event.
Thanks (and to bump). I think Ashtura might have hit on a crucial point! When referring to something happening in the present tense, I CAN see how it can mean “not quite complete” (especially if the main verb is directly about completion, e.g., “I’m just about finished making breakfast”)…but in the simple past, it’s ambiguous (“she just about finished the marathon”).
(In a compound sentence, it might clearly be about completion in the “past,” because you’re really describing the then-present, e.g., “I had just about finished breakfast when the earthquake hit,” but even that is a bit ambiguous to me.)
I’m English, and like the other English people commenting it means she did finish the race. But the context is important. I could picture someone saying “he just about got the ball into the net!” and that would mean the ball did go into the net. She just about finished the race means she did finish the race.
In those contexts it means not quite, but the context is different to the one in the OP, at least in my dialect.
Present simple just about = not quite complete
Past simple just about = complete, but with difficulty.
So you might hear something like “he’s just about got the ball into the net…” (the basketball is still spinning on the rim)… Yes, he’s done it! The ball just about went in! (the ball did go in)."
Just can also mean only. Like, I just want ketchup on my hot dog.
Combined with about meaning approximately, it means only approximately. (And therefore not quite).
A fixed phrase like that could be an idiom where the literal meanings of the words don’t make sense, but in this case, I think they do. Both ways. As you point out, relying on one sense of just, you can get to one meaning, and relying on another, you get a different one. This is a difference in usage.
For me, the tense doesn’t matter, except that the past perfect tense leaves open (by its nature) the question of whether she eventually did finish. That is “she had just about finished the race” gives us a point in time just before she might be expected to finish. But if that sentence were the answer to the question “When did she die?”, I would conclude that she never finished.
Okay… but this definitely means you DO want ketchup on your hot dog.
Certainly I agree with much of your post, including that phrases can evolve to mean something (for many or even all speakers of the language) that doesn’t make “sense” logically.
But I could care less.
“She just about finished the race in an hour.” = “It took her slightly more than an hour to finish the race.”
“She finished the race in just about an hour.” = “It took her approximately 1 hour (maybe more, maybe less) to finish the race.”
Southeast US, for those keeping a tally.