inflation

Meaning

Noun

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

Related

Opposite words

• deflation

Origin

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