inflation

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a general and progressive increase in prices

   in inflation everything gets more valuable except money

2. 2
   noun

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

   The inflation of the balloon took five hours.

3. 3
   noun

   An increase in the quantity of money, leading to a devaluation of existing money, adjusted for by way of higher nominal values.

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

4. 4
   noun

   the act of filling something with air

5. 5
   noun

   lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity

6. 6
   noun

   (cosmology) a brief exponential expansion of the universe (faster than the speed of light) postulated to have occurred shortly after the big bang

7. 7
   noun

   Undue expansion or increase, as of academic grades.

8. 8
   noun

   An extremely rapid expansion of the universe, theorized to have occurred very shortly after the Big Bang.

Etymology

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”). By surface analysis, inflate + -ion.