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[NOTE: In response to Paul Wendt's reply of 16 August 1997 -- see  
http://www.eh.net/Archives/hes/aug-97/0024.html -- RBE] 
 
I approve Mark Tomass's scruples about translating a "high prices" 
meaning. Nowadays readiness to use the word "inflation" is a consequence 
of the identification between monetary quantity and prices variations, 
which is a neoclassical dogma, unfitted to the modern due to growth rise 
in prices. That dogma has been heritated from the times at which the most 
spectacular and related general rises in prices were actually caused by 
monetary troubles. But classical economists believed in the neutrality of 
money, whereas neoclassical ones don't. That's the reason why it's 
interesting to know the moment at which the word "inflation" entered the 
language of economics. Was it a classical or a neoclassical use ? Was it to 
point out empirical facts, or to express a theoretical principle? 
 
As for the etymology, the mechanical origin is possible, as being the 
most direct inspiration. But the word is originally a latin medical one 
(inflatio), and a rhetorical one, too. It entered a modern language for 
the first time when Ambroise Pare intentionally gallicized it in the same 
meaning. The english word seems to be a simple borrowing from French. But 
there is no doubt that it was firstly used in an economic meaning, in 
English. I haven't find it in Irving Fisher's writings, and that could 
mean a recent use. But I haven't read the whole Fisher's in English... 
Thank you for all information about it. 
 
Romain Kroes 
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