resolve

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
resolve/rɪˈzɒlv/

▶verb

• 1 settle or find a solution to.

  ■ Medicine cause (a symptom or condition) to heal or disappear.

• 2 decide firmly on a course of action.

  ■ (of a legislative body) take a decision by a formal vote.

• 3 Music cause (a discord) to pass into a concord during the course of harmonic change.

• 4 (resolve something into) reduce a subject or statement by mental analysis into (separate elements or a more elementary form).

  ■ chiefly Chemistry separate into constituent parts or components.

• 5 (of something seen at a distance) turn into a different form when seen more clearly.

  ■ (of optical or photographic equipment) separate or distinguish between (closely adjacent objects).

  ■ technical separately distinguish (peaks in a graph or spectrum).

• 6 Physics analyse (a force or velocity) into components acting in particular directions.

▶noun

• 1 firm determination.

• 2 US a formal resolution by a legislative body or public meeting.

– derivatives
resolvability noun,
resolvable adjective,
resolved adjective,
resolvedly adverb,
resolver noun.

– origin ME (in the senses ‘dissolve, disintegrate’ and ‘solve a problem’): from L. resolvere, from re- (expressing intensive force) + solvere ‘loosen’.