Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The economic theory or practice of using only one metal as a monetary standard.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The use of only one metal as a standard of value in the coinage of a country; also, the economic theory that advocates such a single standard. See bimetallism.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The legalized use of one metal only, as gold, or silver, in the standard currency of a country, or as a standard of money values. See bimetallism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The use of only one metal (such as gold or silver) in the standard currency of a country, or as a standard of monetary value.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mono- + metal + -ism

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Examples

  • The United States effectively put gold on top in 1834, although British-style monometallism was not wholly adopted until 1900.

    Nathan Lewis: A Brief History of the Dollar 2009

  • Let us turn for a moment and trace the effects of monometallism in England as compared with bimetallism in France during the same period.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • In England, where it has not become a political question, and no one is interested in denying the facts, monometallists almost universally concede the appreciation of gold and defend monometallism on that ground.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • As one whose prosperity depends almost entirely upon that of the farmers, I have naturally thought most of the effect monometallism has had, and will continue to have, upon them.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • Thus, despite the immeasurable advantages which England enjoyed, political, social, and industrial, her great colonial possessions from which she drew enormous wealth, and her exemption from destructive war; despite also the distressing condition of France and her recent enormous losses, we find that in seventy years of bimetallism the working Frenchman had gained wealth almost twice as fast as the working Englishman had in the same number of years of monometallism.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • Bad as have been the effects of monometallism in England, they have been far worse in Ireland; and dark as is the future of the former, it is light itself compared with that evidently in store for the latter.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • She paid it with a rapidity that amazed the world, but in her hour of weakness she consented to gold monometallism.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • They say that, in spite of all devices to the contrary, we must have monometallism any how, and always on the basis of the cheaper metal.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • In short, the amount of grain England has made clear because of the rest of the world adopting monometallism would bread all her people, feed all her live stock, and make three gallons of whiskey for every person on the island.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

  • Her statesmen believed the geologists rather than the panic-stricken financiers, and so she held for gold monometallism.

    If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

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