Verb

(en verb)

To modify.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= A new prescription , passage=As the world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}

To improve or rectify.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

To settle an insurance claim.

To change to fit circumstances.

Verb

(decid)

To resolve (a contest, problem, dispute, etc.); to choose, determine, or settle.

The election will be decided on foreign policies.

We must decide our next move.

Her last-minute goal decided the game.

* Shakespeare

The quarrel toucheth none but us alone; / Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.

To make a judgment, especially after deliberation.

You must decide between good and evil.

I have decided that it is healthier to walk to work.

* Bible, 1 Kings xx. 40

So shall thy judgment be; thyself hast decided it.

To cause someone to come to a decision.

* 1920 , , "The Adventure of the Three Gables" (Norton edition, 2005, p. 1537),

It decides me to look into the matter, for if it is worth anyone's while to take so much trouble, there must be something in it.

(obsolete) To cut off; to separate.

* Fuller

Our seat denies us traffic here; / The sea, too near, decides us from the rest.