inflation

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French inflation (“swelling”), from Latin īnflātiō (“expansion", "blowing up”), from īnflātus, the perfect passive participle of īnflō (“blow into, expand”), from in (“into”) + flō (“blow”). Morphologically inflate +‎ -ion.

• IPA^(key): /ɪnˈfleɪʃən/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

inflation (countable and uncountable, plural inflations)

1. An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas.

   The inflation of the balloon took five hours.

2. (economics) An increase in the quantity of money, leading to a devaluation of existing money.
3. (economics) An increase in the general level of prices or in the cost of living.

   Due to inflation, the monthly gym fee is rising by 10% from January.

4. (economics) A decline in the value of money.
5. Undue expansion or increase, as of academic grades.
6. (cosmology) An extremely rapid expansion of the universe, theorized to have occurred very shortly after the Big Bang.

• deflation

• (cosmology) Burgess & Quevedo, "The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride", Scientific American, November 2007, pg. 57.

• inflatino

From Old French inflation, borrowed from Latin inflātiō, inflātiōnem. Cf. also the dialectal enflaison, which may be of popular origin.

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃.fla.sjɔ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophone: inflations

inflation f (plural inflations)

1. (economics) inflation

   Antonym: déflation

• enfler
• enflure

• “inflation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from Latin īnflātiō.

inflation f (oblique plural inflations, nominative singular inflation, nominative plural inflations)

1. (medicine) swelling

• → English: inflation
• French: inflation