resolve

Sayri-ZOLV/ɹɪˈzɑlv/UK/ɹɪˈzɒlv/

Noun pluralresolves (some meanings)

21 meanings of resolve

1
verbtransitive
To find a solution to a problem or difficulty and bring it to an end.
The city council resolved the flooding problem with a new drainage system.
Engineers worked overnight to resolve the software glitch.
Similarsolve, settle, fix, remedy, rectify
2
verbintransitive
To become firmly determined to reach a goal or carry out a particular action.
The committee resolved to meet again the following month.
I resolve to finish what I started, no matter the obstacles.
Similardecide, determine, vow, pledge, undertake
3
verbtransitive
To come to an agreement and make peace, settling the differences between people.
After months of tension, the partners managed to resolve their differences.
The families resolved their dispute and shared a meal together.
Similarsettle, reconcile, end
4
noununcountable
Firmness of purpose; the determination and strength of will to follow through on what you intend.
The team showed remarkable resolve in the final minutes.
His resolve carried him through the toughest training of his life.
Similardetermination, resolution, willpower, tenacity, grit
Oppositeindecision, irresolution, weakness, hesitancy
Note
The mass noun of willpower, as in "it took all my resolve" or a team's "resolve and unity". It is measured rather than counted, so it takes words like all, great or unending. When one particular intention is in view, English switches to the countable noun, a resolve to do something.
5
nouncountable
A fixed decision or firm intention to carry out a particular action.
He kept his resolve to finish the degree despite setbacks.
Her quiet resolve to leave the company surprised everyone.
Similarresolution, intention, decision, commitment, vow
Note
Here the noun can take an article and a plural: Herman Melville's Pierre (1852) speaks of "four such resolves", each a distinct intention. It is usually completed by a to-infinitive, as in William Arctander O'Brien's "His resolve to die is weakening". Resolution can fill the same slot.
6
verbtransitive
To decide or settle something firmly in purpose; to fix one's mind upon a course and make it certain.
After much thought, he resolved the course he would take.
The committee must resolve its position ahead of the vote.
Similardecide, settle, determine, fix, finalize
Note
Mostly heard in the passive, where being resolved means having one's purpose fixed, as in Shakespeare's "how I firmly am resolv'd" in The Taming of the Shrew. That construction separates it from the "decide to" use, which takes a to-infinitive. Watch for the overlap with the "convince" sense: "I am resolved" can mean either determined or persuaded, and only the context tells which.
7
verbtransitive
To free someone from doubt; to inform, convince, or assure them of something and make them certain.
Pray, resolve me whether the rumors are true.
The teacher resolved the students of their confusion with a clear example.
Similarinform, assure, convince, satisfy, enlighten
Note
The person, not the problem, is the object. Pope's "Resolve me Reason" asks to be told, and Fielding's surgeon "resolved him only by saying" something curt. The passive is common too: Raleigh is "resolved it cannot be equalled", meaning convinced. In modern English, resolve someone is easily misread, so inform or assure is the safer choice.
8
verbtransitive
To break something down into simpler or more intelligible parts; to make it clear, unravel it, or explain it.
The analyst resolved the tangled argument into its basic premises.
Philosophers try to resolve abstract concepts into clearer terms.
Similarreduce, analyze, dissect, unravel, clarify
Note
Here the word stays closest to its Latin source, resolvō, "loosen, thaw, melt": to resolve a doubt or a riddle is to loosen something knotted until it comes apart into plain sense. Doubt is its classic object. Shakespeare's "Resolve my doubt" and Tennyson's "resolve the doubt" in 1850 sit centuries apart. Unlike the problem-solving sense, the weight falls on understanding, not on ending the trouble.
9
nouncountable
An act of resolving something; the settling or solving of a matter.
The committee praised the swift resolve of the funding dispute.
A fair resolve of the conflict required compromise from everyone.
Similarresolution, settlement, solution
Note
A noun mostly left to resolution in general prose, but alive in software. Matt Lombard's SolidWorks 2007 Bible has the user prompted to "approve the resolve" of lightweight components. Outside such technical settings, "the resolve of the dispute" can sound odd, because readers expect the noun resolve to mean determination.
10
verbtransitive
To look up the network address of a hostname, or the item a symbol refers to in source code.
The DNS server failed to resolve the hostname during the outage.
The compiler resolves each symbol to its declaration before linking.
Similarmap, translate
Note
A computing sense in which a name is traded for the thing it stands for. Networks resolve a hostname to a numerical IP address, and compilers and linkers resolve a symbol to the declaration or memory location it points to. The usual construction is resolve X to Y. The verb also works without an object: a name that fails to resolve points at nothing the system can find.

11
verbtransitive
To make the separate parts of something visible or distinguishable, as through a lens or other instrument.
The new lens resolves fine details that older models blurred together.
Astronomers struggled to resolve the two stars, so close they appeared as one.
Similardistinguish, separate, discern, differentiate
Oppositeblur
Note
Optics measures this sense as resolution: the finer the detail an instrument can tell apart, the greater its resolving power. Fenella Saunders, writing in American Scientist in 2013, credits the mammalian eye with "high spatial resolution". The classic test is two points close together. A lens resolves them when they appear as two rather than as a single blur.
12
verbtransitive or intransitive
To bring a chord from dissonance to consonance.
Like the moment a held breath is finally let out.
A skilled composer knows exactly when to resolve a dissonant chord.
The suspended fourth finally resolves to the tonic in the last measure.
Note
In harmony, this is the word for release: a dissonant chord or interval resolves when it moves to a consonant one. Musicians use it both ways. A composer resolves a chord, and a suspension resolves to the tonic. The noun is resolution, and a passage that withholds that move is heard as unresolved.
13
verbreflexivetransitive or intransitive
To break down into constituent parts; to decompose or disintegrate into a simpler state.
Chemists can resolve the substance into its constituent parts.
Without care, the ancient timbers resolve back into soil.
Similardecompose, separate, reduce, disintegrate, dissolve
Note
Hamlet sets the tone, wishing his flesh would "melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew". The verb's old Latin meanings appear there in a row. The usual pattern is resolve into or to something simpler, as in Dryden's souls "resolv'd to Elements agen". The verb works transitively, intransitively and reflexively, and in literary use it often carries a sense of dissolution and return.
14
verbtransitive
To separate a racemic compound into its constituent enantiomers.
Chemists resolve the racemate by forming diastereomeric salts.
The pharmacist resolved the racemic drug into its active enantiomer.
Similarseparate
Note
Chemistry's word for splitting a racemic mixture of two mirror-image molecules into its separate enantiomers. Mirror images share most physical properties, so they are typically first converted into diastereomers, which differ enough to be isolated. The process is called resolution, and the separated product is said to be resolved.
15
verbdatedtransitive
To cause an inflammation or tumor to disperse and gradually disappear.
Poultices were once believed to resolve tumors without surgery.
A good poultice, the surgeon claimed, resolves stubborn inflammations.
Similardisperse, dissipate, reduce, clear
Note
Older medicine pictured a swelling as something to be dispersed rather than drained, and resolve named that hoped-for outcome: an inflammation or tumor that simply melts away. Discuss, in the same tradition, also meant "disperse". The transitive usage is dated, so a modern reader meets it mainly in historical medical writing.
16
verbraretransitive
To melt, dissolve, or soften a solid into a liquid.
The alchemist sought a fire hot enough to resolve gold into a flowing liquid.
With milke-white Hartes vpon an Iuorie ſled, / Thou ſhalt be drawen amidſt the froſen Pooles, / And ſcale the yſie mountaines lofty tops: / Which with thy beautie will be soone reſolu’d.
c. 1587, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. The First Part
Similarmelt, dissolve, liquefy, soften
Oppositesolidify, harden
Note
Marlowe's Tamburlaine promises icy mountaintops "soon resolv'd" by a beloved's beauty, the transitive melting sense at its most poetic. It is rare, and in ordinary prose readers would likely take it for another meaning. Melt or dissolve says the same thing without the ambiguity. Its intransitive partner describes the solid doing the melting itself.
17
verbrareintransitivereflexive
To melt or dissolve, passing from a solid into a liquid.
Solids of this kind resolve quickly when the temperature climbs.
When the blood stagnates in any part, it first coagulates, then resolves, and turns alkaline.
1731, John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments
Similarmelt, dissolve, liquefy, thaw
Oppositesolidify, freeze
Note
The solid melts of its own accord here, with no agent named. John Arbuthnot's Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments (1731) has stagnant blood that "first coagulates, then resolves". Like its transitive twin, it is rare. Outside writing of that period, melt or dissolve is the natural verb.
18
verbarchaictransitive
To find the solution to an equation or similar mathematical problem.
Early algebraists struggled to resolve cubic equations by general methods.
He resolved the system of equations using substitution.
Note
An archaic mathematical use; modern writers solve equations rather than resolve them. It sits close to the problem-solving sense, and older mathematical prose may resolve a problem that a current textbook would simply solve. Use it only when quoting or deliberately echoing that older style.
19
verbobsoletetransitive
To condense a gas or vapor into a liquid.
Natural philosophers believed extreme cold could resolve air into water.
The chilled chamber resolved the vapor into droplets on its walls.
Note
An obsolete use from the language of early natural philosophy, when air and vapor could be said to be resolved into water. Modern English says condense or liquefy. A writer using resolve this way today would be quoting or imitating older texts.
20
verbobsolete
To relax and lie at ease; to rest comfortably.
Note
Here the Latin root's sense of loosening survives most literally: a person unbends and lets go. Ben Jonson's Discoveries (1641) uses it reflexively, of a man who will resolve himself into all sports and looseness again, and that shape is the one to recognize in older prose. It is obsolete now, so modern English says relax or unwind. Don't mistake it for the "firm decision" meaning.
21
Sayree-SOLVUS/ˌɹiˈsɑlv/UK/ˌɹiːˈsɒlv/
verb
Alternative spelling of re-solve.
Given the flawed data, the analysts had to resolve the whole system a second time.
He decided to resolve the model after the first attempt produced errors.
Note
A homograph to watch: written without its hyphen, the verb meaning "to solve again" looks exactly like the common verb, and the etymology calls the two a piecewise doublet. The hyphenated re-solve is the safe choice. Written solid, only context, such as a second attempt at the same calculation, tells the reader which word is meant.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English resolven, from Old French resolver, a learned borrowing of Latin resolvō ("to loosen, thaw, melt, resolve"), which is re- plus solve.