just-published

The compound adjective 'just-published' is a modern English formation that transparently combines two established elements. The adverb 'just', with its core sense of recency or immediacy, derives from the Latin iustus, which originally pertained to law and fairness, a meaning that narrowed in English to temporal precision. The participial adjective 'published' originates from the Latin publicare, meaning to confiscate for public use or, later, to make generally known. When combined, the literal meaning 'recently made public' directly and logically describes a book, article, or other work that has very recently entered the public domain, capturing the precise moment of its transition from private manuscript to publicly available material.

Structure: just (recently) + published (made public) - just: From Latin iustus (righteous, proper), via Old French. In this compound, it functions as an adverb meaning 'very recently' or 'immediately before'. - published: From Latin publicare (to make public), via Anglo-Norman French. It is the past participle form of the verb 'publish', functioning here as an adjective meaning 'made public'.