www.alphadictionary.com

• resolution •

Pronunciation: re-zê-lu-shên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A dedicated promise or firm commitment or decision to do something. 2. A formal decision, rule, or law. 3. A solution or means of ending a problem oneself. 4. Reduction of a substance to its elementary constituents, as the resolution of sunlight into different colors. 5. Fineness of detail, as a high-resolution video screen. 6. Coming together and clarification, as the resolution of the plot of a novel.

Notes: Today's Good Word is the noun of the verb resolve, which can also be used as a noun meaning "firm commitment", as to carry out your New Year's resolutions with resolve. The verb has several adjectives, including resolutive and resolvable, usually referring to problems or substances that can be resolved. Resolutional is a new adjective now used quite widely in referring to the resolution of video screens: high-resolutional screens.

In Play: alphaDictionary's resolutions for 2017 are to avoid words like today's with so many meanings and not to make any more resolutions. Others will continue to make resolutions to lose weight, give up smoking, and the like. Some resolutions have the force of law: "Did you hear about the Congressional resolution to make April Fool's Day a national holiday?" A resolution to avoid partisan conflict in Congress would be more useful.

Word History: Despite the fact that New Year's resolutions tend to tie us down, the word originates in the Latin verb resolvere "to untie", made up of re- "again" + solvere "to loosen, untie". Solvere comes from Proto-Indo-European leu- "to loosen, divide" with an ancient prefix su- "apart," giving su-leu-, which evolved into Latin solv- plus the verbal endings like the infinitive ending, -ere seen here. The same root came to Germanic without the prefix but with a suffix -s, filtering down to us as lose and less. It also turned up in Old Norse as louss "loose", which we borrowed from the Vikings as our very own adjective, loose.

I wonder why anyone would use resolutional, at least in the phrase 'high-resolutional screens'. It also doesn't show up in my search of the internot, so I'm not so sure about its existence.

The short form, hi-res (and its opposite, lo-res), shows up with regularity in the crossword puzzles I do.

The Ngram Viewer says there was a peak around 1990. Here's a quote in the anticipated usage:

Feature Number of Area Images M1 16 M2 17 M3 14 M4 17 Feature Images Approximation images of 4 resolutional layers and absolute wavelet images ( = 12 images ) Original image , energy images , computed within a 3 x 3- environment using 5 ...
Computer assisted radiology : International symposium on computer and communication systems for image guided diagnosis and therapy : Selected preprints, 1995

and a link to the Ngram Viewer plot
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... moothing=3

I'm glad I'm not trying to translate this into any other language. I must be somewhat dense, as I can't put my finger on just what it means and how it's used. The example in the quotation is not the same as in the original post. Or am I mistaken?

Slava, I believe "resolutional" in "4 resolutional layers" in the Ngram View quote and "high-resolutional screens" in your example both use "resolutional" in the sense set out in this dictionary definition:
▸ noun: the ability of a microscope or telescope to measure the angular separation of images that are close together

I do not think this sense of "resolutional" is limited to microscopes and telescopes but is useful with respect to all sorts of imaging devices.

Here is an example of "resolutional" meaning "seeking resolution"
... arguments are independent reasons ( contentions ) introduced by the negative for the rejection of the resolution . There are two basic types of off - case arguments including counter - resolutional arguments and value objections .
From Prima facie : a guide to value debate; Wood & Midgley: 1989