bullionize

English

Etymology

bullion +‎ -ize

Verb

bullionize (third-person singular simple present bullionizes, present participle bullionizing, simple past and past participle bullionized)

1. To convert or make convertible to bullion, especially gold bullion.
   • 1880, United States. Congress, Congressional Record:

     It was an act to bullionize the debt of the United States and to give a value of five hundred millions to the unfortunate creditors, those poor fllows that lay like Lazarus at the gates of the rich man to pick up the crumbs that fell from the Government table: an act to raise the securiities from eighty cents in the dollar to $1.20 in the dollar!

   • 1878, Pamphlets on Finance - Volume 3:

     In addition to that, under the act of 1869, at a time when the five-twenties and other bonds were payable in legal-tenders, they prevailed upon Congress to bullionize the debt and thus we gave them $500,000,000 more in value.

   • 1935, Emergency Relief Appropriation--Supplemental Hearings:

     Did Congress pass a law directing the bullionizing of all of the gold coins?

2. (figurative, obsolete) To make or become noble or of high quality.
   • 1897, H. W. Bowman, The Money Question Under the X-rays of Prophecy, pages 185–186:

     This is by no means an implication that the successful are tyrannical oppressors, and the mediocre deluded serfs, for there are probably more men in the present House of Lords who need no patent of nobility to make good their claim to leadership than in our bullionized Senate.

   • 1910, Up-to-the-times Magazine - Volume 5, page 3383:

     All of Newport by the way is not bullionized ; part of it is as squallid as any slum district.

3. (obsolete) To mint into coins.
   • 1847, William Ward, Remarks on the Monetary Legislation of Great Britain, page 52:

     Gold for exportation, which was required to be “sworn off" as it was called, that is, not coin bullionized, used to pass for a shilling or two more than coin per ounce; and therefore the coin is additionally altered to that extent, and the whole policy of former legislation, from the first enactments in the reign of Edward I., has been hastily changed, to the detriment of our circulation as applicable to our internal and domestic uses, increased as those uses are by the circumstances I have enumerated.