Definitions

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

  • noun The act of inflating or the state of being inflated.
  • noun A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money.
  • noun The rate at which this increase occurs, expressed as a percentage over a period of time, usually a year.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of inflating or distending with air or gas.
  • noun The state of being inflated or distended; distention: as, the inflation of the lungs.
  • noun Undue expansion or elevation; increase beyond the proper or just amount or value: as, inflation of trade, currency, or prices; inflation of stocks (that is, of the price of stocks).
  • noun The state of being puffed up; turgidness; pretentiousness; conceit: as, inflation of style or manner.

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

  • noun The act or process of inflating, or the state of being inflated, as with air or gas; distention; expansion; enlargement.
  • noun The state of being puffed up, as with pride; conceit; vanity.
  • noun U.S. Persistent expansion or increase in the general level of prices, usually caused by overissue of currency, and resulting in a reduced value of the currency. It is contrasted with deflation, and is when it occurs to a very high degree is called hyperinflation.

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

  • noun An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas.
  • noun economics An increase in the general level of prices or in the cost of living.
  • noun economics A decline in the value of money.
  • noun economics An increase in the quantity of money, leading to a devaluation of existing money.
  • noun Undue expansion or increase, as of academic grades.
  • noun cosmology An extremely rapid expansion of the universe, theorised to have occurred very shortly after the big bang.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the act of filling something with air
  • noun lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity
  • noun a general and progressive increase in prices
  • noun (cosmology) a brief exponential expansion of the universe (faster than the speed of light) postulated to have occurred shortly after the big bang

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Latin īnflātiō ("expansion", "blowing up"), from īnflātus, the perfect passive participle of īnflō ("blow into", "expand"), from in ("into") + flō ("blow").

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Examples

  • After 5 years this stocks may be (but not required) sold on the market or if they have less value that original value + inflation, government will buy them at value +inflation.

    Latest Articles 2008

  • Officials are worried about the psychological impact that the word inflation might have on Argentines, many of whom suffered through hyperinflation two decades ago.

    Argentine Consulting Firm Stops Publishing Inflation Estimates Taos Turner 2011

  • Mervyn King vs eurozone: A tale of two banks Bank of England Governor Mervyn King coined the term "inflation nutter", but his euro-zone counterparts are the ones living up to the label...

    Evening Standard - Home Russell Lynch 2011

  • Long term inflation is never good for the holders of capital.

    Matthew Yglesias » What a Difference a Fed Board Member Makes 2010

  • Perhaps because of Argentina's traumatic experience with hyperinflation in 1989, administration officials almost never use the word "inflation," preferring instead phrases like "price dispersion."

    IMF to Push Argentina for New Price Index Ken Parks 2011

  • Whatever the case, top government officials are concerned about rising prices and are loathe to use the word inflation, preferring instead to talk about "price dispersion."

    Argentine Consulting Firm Stops Publishing Inflation Estimates Taos Turner 2011

  • The number of mentions of the word "inflation" in leading U.K. newspapers is even higher now than it was during 2008's inflationary spike, when the consumer price index peaked at 5.2%, according to an analysis of the Dow Jones Factiva database.

    BOE Staggers Toward Perma-Inflation Alen Mattich 2011

  • Higher inflation is a way to push "real," or inflation-adjusted, interest rates down.

    How It Works; When It Doesn't Sudeep Reddy 2010

  • As it happens, though, over the long term inflation is gradually reducing the real value of the mortgage interest deduction (current downturn notwithstanding).

    Matthew Yglesias » Command and Control 2009

  • “As it happens, though, over the long term inflation is gradually reducing the real value of the mortgage interest deduction (current downturn notwithstanding).”

    Matthew Yglesias » Command and Control 2009

Comments

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  • Daffynition: cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

    January 6, 2007

  • the cost of air in the tires (Annie Proulx, The Shipping News).

    March 4, 2012

  • Does a nearly instantaneous twenty-five order of magnitude faster-than-light expansion of the fabric of space-time sound totally ridiculous and made up? If so, you’re probably not a crazy physicist.

    In fact, this is the solution physicists have come up with to explain why the universe is bigger than it should be and why it is at an even temperature. They call is (drumroll) “inflation.” Okay, not the more awe inspiring of names. But the crazy thing is that it’s probably true.

    Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe (Riverhead Books: New York, 2017), p. 240

    May 7, 2018