The turn of the year is a time to turn the page on problems. For every problem there must be at least one solution, and New Year’s is certainly a time for solutions – often aqueous solutions of ethanol. Yes, yes, if we want to resolve our problems, we must be resolute in our resolutions; but if we want simply to dissolve our problems, their dissolution leads us to be dissolute.
Wait. Let’s solve this little matter first: Why can’t we just be solute? Isn’t dissolute the opposite of solute? And then isn’t resolute a repetition of solute?
Well, to start with, we can be solute… providing we wish to immerse ourselves in an acid bath, say. Because to be solute is to be in solution – that is, dissolved. Literally.
Hmm. If we are dissolved, we have a problem, which is the opposite of being solved – is that the reason it’s dis-solved?
Well, no. Latin prefixes are not so schematically simple: sometimes they’re virtually flammable or inflammable; they may be inspectable or inscrutable – or both. In the current case, we start with solvo, which means ‘I solve, untie, undo’ – wait, no we don’t, because solvo is from se- ‘away’ plus luo ‘I let free, loosen, satisfy’. So solvo is ‘I set free away’ – sort of like how in English we can sit or we can sit down, or we can end or we can end up, that kind of thing.
And then we add more prefixes. Re- means ‘back’ and implies that the loosening or undoing is returning it to a previous state (a problem is a tangle in the hair of your life; resolve it and you are combing that hair back to the way it was and should be). Dis- means ‘apart’ and so dissolve means, etymologically, ‘undo apart’ or, all untangled, ‘set free away apart’ – not just loosen it and let it hang but actually separate it. If you dissolve something, it is altogether undone and separated – usually chemically, in modern usage.
So if you are dissolute you are altogether undone apart away across the place, yes? Perhaps chemically? Hmm, well, perhaps, but it’s a bit more figurative: it is not you in physical entirety but your moral substance that is as dissolved as salt in water. Originally, yes, dissolute meant literally ‘disunited, separated, dissolved’; but then it meant ‘enfeebled, lacking in altogetherness’, and then ‘lax, careless, remiss’, and then ‘unrestrained or undisciplined in behaviour’ or – yes – ‘loose’, in the sense it is sometimes used in. And finally dissolute established its current sense of being morally dissolved, which is – unknot this one – the opposite of being morally resolved or resolute.
Resolute, once we resolve it into its parts, is in fact the word that has changed more in sense. There was a time when resolute meant what dissolute means now, and resolve meant dissolve – or condense like vapour, as in “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” When Hamlet said that, he was not in our modern sense resolute… yet.
But just as, over the course of the play, rather than resolving himself into a dew, Hamlet resolves himself into a doing, over time resolve focused its meaning on the conclusion of problems and the removal of obstacles, and resolute followed. When you have resolved problems, you have analyzed and separated them back into their constituent parts: water here, salt there. And, having resolved them that way, you can decide – decide coming from decido, ‘I cut off’ – and, being in a state of resolution, you are resolute: “This is this, and that is that; I have determined it and I am determined.”
Which is quite the opposite of being dissolute. When you are resolute, you have resolved and solved; when you are dissolute, you are simply dissolved. Sometimes you solve the problems, and sometimes the problems solve you.
And so the two sides of this lexicosemantic coin are like the two sides of the new year. You may be dissolute on New Year’s Eve; you are expected to be resolute on New Year’s Day. Or perhaps on January the second… after the effects of your solutions have been resolved.
Sesquiotica 