====================== HES POSTING ================== [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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]