mediumize

English

Alternative forms

• mediumise

Etymology

medium +‎ -ize

Verb

mediumize (third-person singular simple present mediumizes, present participle mediumizing, simple past and past participle mediumized)

1. To act as a medium; to channel or speak for a spirit or noncorporal being.
   • 1897, Alfred Ellingwood Giles, English and Parental Versions of the Bible and Its Deity, page 51:

     During the forty years that Moses mediumized for the god of the Hebrews, there was no need of diviners or their arts.

   • 1970, Allan Kardec, The Book on Mediums: Guide for Mediums and Invocators, page 282:

     because then our périsprit, acting on the périsprit of him whom we mediumize, has only to give impulsion to the hand which serves us as a pen-holder; while with insufficient mediums we are obliged to perform a labor analagous to that we do when we communicate by rappins, designating letter by letter, word by word, each of the phrases which form the translation of the thoughts we wish to communicate.

   • 1985, Folklore americano - Issue 40, page 89:

     When we say that to make myths is to hypersuggest we are not also saying that to mediumize is to hypersuggest . That would be an aberration because the best work of the medium is not done when the individual is in a hypersuggestive state .

2. To make into a spiritual medium; to imbue with spiritual energy.
   • 1873, M. J. Williamson, Modern Diabolism: Commonly Called Modern Spiritualism:

     And each guardian mind of the spiritual group contributes its propoertion of magnetic emanation, to form a line of communication, just as each person in the terrestrial group lends his or her mental and physical influence to mediumize the table.

   • 1910, Andrew Jackson Davis, The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse:

     Their exercise promotes and advances the individual to the superior state; to attain which, many minds are obliged first to be magnetized or mediumized.

   • 2005, Harald W. Tietze, Miracle Healing, page 67:

     He says that spirits do the healing and that he is mediumized throughout his healings.

3. To make into or act as a medium of exchange.
   • 1898, C. L. Bancroft, The American Trades Alliance, page 221:

     None of the Alliance Exchanges issue anything intended as a circulating medium. The Bank alone mediumizes securites.

   • 1901, Trans-communicator - Volume 18, page 837:

     ... the former professedly reducing money to simply and only a medium of exchange, a counter in trade, destroying all its private investment and private money-loaning qualities by placing upon the collectivity the duty of mediumizing all values, which is but another way of saying that the government shall be the only money loaner; the latter requiring of all labor-employing industries a recognized responsibility to public supervision and control in regard to wages and dividends and profits, involving a most abject subjection of private affairs to a most inquisitorial public inspection.

4. To transition into using a medium of exchange.
   • 1920, Nursing World - Volumes 64-65, page 210:

     The discovery of America brought on expansion of commerce and trade, and the guild system was no longer able to meet the demands made upon it; then with the advent of capitalism, trade became gradually mediumized and the demand for increase in production was accomplished by the numerous inventions and discoveries of the eighteenth century.

   • 1962, Borislav T. Blagojević, The Legal Status of Agricultural Land, page 86:

     There was a considerable increase in the number of small and medium peasant's holdings, a mediumizing process taking place in the whole Yugoslav economy at the time as a result;

5. To act as an intermediary; to translate from one context to another.
   • 1972, Parker Tyler, The shadow of an airplane climbs the Empire State Building:

     Whatever has happened outside this brain, without its instigation, is automatically transformed by the process of assimilating, or mediumizing, it.

   • 1982, Brian O'Doherty, American Masters: The Voice and the Myth in Modern Art, page 276:

     In terms of "mediumizing" between art and life, to use Mary Josephson's idea, it is one of the most consummate of Rauschenberg's achievements, all of which are defined by temporal signatures.

   • 1988, Rob Perrée, De Karakteristieken Van Een Medium, page 23:

     to quote in this connection the words of the French philosopher Baudrillard: 'Anyhow, to me the whole problem seems to be that nowadays events are no longer mediumized, mediated by the media, but that they are rather construed in the service of the media.'

   • 1997, Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Jean Baudrillard: art and artefact, page 22:

     Objects transposed to the other side of the screen, mediumized (we don't even enjoy the good old status of passive spectator any more), hypostasized as if transfigured in situ, on the spot, by aesthetic or mediatic decision, transfigured in their specific habits and ways of life, as living museum exhibits.

6. To finish by applying a medium.
   • 1880, J. P. Ourdan, The Art of Retouching, page 88:

     There is no better method, beside retouching upon mediumized films than using a hard shellac varnish, and rubbing over the solution of resin in turpentine, mentioned in the chapter on Materials.

   • 1936, Robert Johnson, T. S. Bruce, Alfred Braithwaite, The Art of Retouching Photographic Negatives and Practical Directions how to Finish and Color Photographic Enlargements, Etc.:

     Unsatisfactory attempts at retouching may be removed with the finger rag slightly mostened with spirits of turpentine (the best), and then the negative is re-mediumized with the regular retouching medium for another trial.

7. To make less extreme; to make medium in size or intensity.
   • 1922, John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga - Volume 3:

     We've got one or two highly mediumizing institutions – the public schools, 'cricket' in its various forms – but as a people we're chockfull of extremism.

   • 1980, Richard A. Guedj, Methodology of Interaction: Seillac II, page 225:

     We have no intention to minimize, or even mediumize, the difficulties and disappointments that lie ahead in the task of creating computer programs capable of understanding natural language.

   • 2013, Numerical Taxonomy, page 327:

     In that case we would be better off maximizing, or perhaps "mediumizing", the numbers of postulated changes.