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23 Jun 97, Romain Kroes <[log in to unmask]> noted that "inflation"  entered 
English from French, where it had a medical denotation (and he implied 
that the changes to English and monetary denotation were concurrent). 
 
1. 
Mark Tomass (between Babson and Harvard and between email addresses) 
recently translated a work of Al-Maqrizi (c.1300) from Arabic into 
English.  He informs me that inflation in Arabic is "becoming large", 
which is also medical terminology.  Al-Maqrizi discusses some contemporary 
(c.1300) monetary matters, but Mark thinks that the closest thing to 
inflation in the work is a word meaning literally "high prices" and he 
judged not to use "inflation" in his translation.  
 
Another translator of Al-Maqrizi did use the English word "inflation" 
regarding monetary matters.  I have suggested to Mark, a nonsubscriber, 
that some folks here will be interested to hear more about what is 
involved in such decisions.  
 
2. 
By the way, if the monetary sense of "inflation" is recent enough, it 
might have been inspired by mechanical pneumatics (air pumps) rather 
than medicine (lungs).  
 
----Paul 
 
Paul Wendt, Watertown MA 
Assistant Editor, HES e-information services 
 
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