resolution

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The state or quality of being resolute; firm determination.
• noun A firm decision to do something.
• noun A course of action determined or decided on.
• noun The act of solving or explaining a problem or puzzle.
• noun The resolving or concluding of a dispute or disagreement.
• noun The part of a literary work in which the complications of the plot are resolved or simplified.
• noun A formal statement of a decision or expression of opinion put before or adopted by an assembly such as the US Congress.
• noun Physics & Chemistry The act or process of separating or reducing something into its constituent parts.
• noun The clarity or fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, often measured as the number or the density of the discrete units, such as pixels or dots, that compose it.
• noun Medicine The subsiding or termination of an abnormal condition, such as a fever or inflammation.
• noun The progression of a dissonant tone or chord to a consonant tone or chord.
• noun The tone or chord to which such a progression is made.
• noun The substitution of one metrical unit for another, especially the substitution of two short syllables for one long syllable in quantitative verse.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In optics: The separation by means of an optical instrument, such as a telescope or spectroscope, of close-lying bodies such as the components of a double star or of a multiple line in the spectrum.
• noun The rendition by means of a microscope of the minute details of structure of a substance.
• noun The act, operation, or process of resolving.
• noun The act of mathematically analyzing a velocity, force, or other vector quantity into components having dilferent directions, whether these have independent causes or not.
• noun The state or process of dissolving; dissolution; solution.
• noun The act of resolving or determining; also, anything resolved or determined upon; a fixed determination of mind; a settled purpose: as, a resolution to reform our lives; a resolution, to undertake an expedition.
• noun The character of acting with fixed purpose; resoluteness; firmness, steadiness, or constancy in execution; determination: as, a man of great resolution.
• noun A formal proposition brought before a deliberative body for discussion and adoption.
• noun A formal determination or decision of a legislative or corporate body, or of any association of individuals, when adopted by vote. See by-law, 2, ordinance, 7, regulation, 2.
• noun Determination of a cause, as in a court of justice.
• noun The state of being settled in opinion; freedom from doubt; conviction; certainty.
• noun In music:
• noun Of a particular voice-part, the act, process, or result of passing from a discord to a concord. See preparation and percussion.
• noun The concordant tone in which a discord is merged.
• noun In medicine, a removal or disappearance, as the disappearing of a swelling or an inflammation without coming to suppuration, the removal by absorption and expectoration of inflammatory products in pulmonary solidification, or the disappearance of fever.
• noun In mathematics, same as solution.
• noun In ancient prosody:
• noun The use of two short times or syllables as the equivalent for one long; the division of a disemic time into the two semeia of which it is composed.
• noun Synonyms Decomposition, separation, disentanglement.
• noun Determination, etc. (see decision), perseverance, tenacity, Inflexibility, fortitude, boldness, courage, resolve.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act, operation, or process of resolving.
• noun The act of separating a compound into its elements or component parts.
• noun The act of analyzing a complex notion, or solving a vexed question or difficult problem.
• noun obsolete The state of being relaxed; relaxation.
• noun The state of being resolved, settled, or determined; firmness; steadiness; constancy; determination.
• noun That which is resolved or determined; a settled purpose; determination. Specifically: A formal expression of the opinion or will of an official body or a public assembly, adopted by vote
• noun obsolete The state of being resolved or firm in opinion or thought; conviction; assurance.
• noun (Math.) The act or process of solving; solution.
• noun (Med.) A breaking up, disappearance; or termination, as of a fever, a tumor, or the like.
• noun (Mus.) The passing of a dissonant into a consonant chord by the rising or falling of the note which makes the discord.
• noun (Technical) The act of distinguishing between two close but not identical objects, or, when taking a measurement, bbetween two close values of the property measured.
• noun (Technical) a measure of the ability to distinguish between two close but not identical values of the property being measured; it is expressed as the difference in values of a property necessary to make such a distinction. Also called resolving power.
• noun See under Joint, a.
• noun (Mech.) the separation of a single force or motion into two or more which have different directions, and, taken together, are an equivalent for the single one; -- the opposite of composition of a force.