https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentary/1997/ec-19971015-on-the-origin-and-evolution-of-the-word-inflation https://www.clevelandfed.org/pu

https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentary/1997/ec-19971015-on-the-origin-and-evolution-of-the-word-inflation https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar... This is a good overview of the history of the term "inflation." Ideally people would specify which inflation they're referring to, like monetary Inflation or price inflation. Short of that though, until we started moving to full fiat currencies inflation without any qualifier was inflation of the money supply. After the move to fiat they repurposed the braod term to mean price inflation, presumably because monetary inflation isn't meaningful when your system is based entirely on manipulating the money supply.