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1. A general and progressive increase in prices
   "in inflation everything gets more valuable except money";
   - rising prices
    
2. (cosmology) a brief exponential expansion of the universe (faster than the speed of light) postulated to have occurred shortly after the big bang
    
3. Lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity
   - ostentation, ostentatiousness, pomposity, pompousness, pretentiousness, puffiness, splashiness
    
4. The act of filling something with air

Derived forms: inflations

Type of: blowup, detonation, economic process, enlargement, expansion, explosion, inelegance

Antonym: deflation, disinflation

Encyclopedia: Inflation